Virtual Advocacy Days to #SAVENYCHILDCARE
THANK YOU to all of the dedicated advocates who joined Brightside Up for two full days of Zoom calls to help educate and inform our leaders in Albany of the critical need to support child care!
On Tuesday, February 9 & 16, over 500 New York parents, early care educators, child care providers, and activists came together virtually to call on New York State to invest $500 million in federal and state funds this year to save the child care sector, which has been battered by the impacts of the recession and set New York on a path to provide access to high-quality child care to all New York families. State legislative champions and national and statewide organizations urged participants to join in the Empire State Campaign for Child Care and Winning Beginning NY #SaveNYChildCare Campaign. The Campaign is focused on securing $500 million in new state funding this year to stabilize and rebuild the child care system. The groups are also working to influence the state plan, due by February 25, 2021, that outlines how new federal child care funding will be allocated and distributed.
Our request to State lawmakers:
Make no cuts to 2020 funding for child care in 2021
Provide counties with $370 million to make the child care subsidy system more equitable
Commit to eliminating expulsions and suspensions in child care and pre-K
Invest $100M to create a fund to increase workforce compensation to a fair wage and improve child care quality