Campaign for Children Statement on 2019 State of the City Address

January 10, 2019

“The Campaign for Children applauds Mayor de Blasio for his commitment to expanding 3-K to more parts of the city, which will lay important groundwork for ensuring all New York City children have access to high quality early childhood education. These investments will have long-term, lasting impacts on the health and development of New York’s children.

Despite this commitment, we are deeply concerned that the Mayor’s priorities do not include salary parity for early childhood education teachers and staff in community-based programs. Salary disparities among early childhood educators contribute to deep, systemic inequalities that run counter to the Administration’s stated goals of reducing disparities and improving equity in education. We urge the Mayor to include salary parity in his Preliminary Budget. We also call on the Mayor to implement universal after-school for elementary students and ensure that they and their middle school peers have access to a summer programming component.”

ABOUT CAMPAIGN FOR CHILDREN:

The Campaign for Children is a coalition of 150 early childhood education and after-school advocacy and provider organizations, including Citizens’ Committee for Children, The Children’s Aid Society, United Neighborhood Houses NY, Good Shepherd Services, Neighborhood Family Services Coalition, the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies, Children’s Defense Fund-NY, Day Care Council of New York, UJA-Federation of New York, and YMCA of Greater New York. The Campaign’s successful advocacy saved child care and after-school programs for more than 47,000 children by securing more than $120 million of one-year City Council discretionary funds for two consecutive years, which then were successfully baselined. The Campaign also advocated for the expansion of Universal Pre-K and middle school after-school programs in NYC, and saved summer programs for over 34,000 children.