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Senator Borrello speaks on the importance of the state
releasing the CARES Act funds targeted for child care. Behind him are
Chautauqua County Executive PJ Wendel and Beth Starks, Executive Director of
the Chautauqua Lake Child Care Center
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Joined by child-care professionals at the Lake Shore Family
Care Center in Irving, Senator Borrello said the decision by Albany to withhold
aid from Washington is slowing the state’s economic recovery from COVID-19.
“Child-care workers are essential workers,” Senator Borrello
said. “At the height of the crisis, despite the risk to their own families,
registered child-care providers continued caring for the children of front-line
and emergency workers, so those workers could provide essential goods and
services to us and our families.”
In April, New York State received $164.6 million in federal
CARES Act funding earmarked to support child-care programs and providers.
Beth Starks, is founder and Executive Director of Chautauqua
Lake Child Care Center, Assistant Professor and Early Childhood Education
Coordinator at Jamestown Community College, and a member of the Governor’s
Child Care Availability Task Force.
Ms. Starks said of the $164.6 million in CARES Act funding
given the state, New York has allocated $95 million but has only released $30
million to child-care providers. She said the state should at least release the
$65 million in federal funds it has set aside for child-care programs.
"Pre-Covid, child care was in a crisis situation,
preventing people from going to work,” she said. “We are in what’s called a
child care desert because there isn’t enough child care here in Western New
York, or in much of New York State.”
According to the Center for American Progress, 64 percent of
New Yorkers lived in a child care desert (before the pandemic), which means
that there are either no child care providers or so few options that there are
more than three times as many children as licensed child care slots.
Ms. Starks said in the past four months, the situation has
gotten much worse.
“Over 50 percent of my colleagues in Chautauqua County have
closed their doors,” she said. “Nationally, it is estimated that about half of
them never will open again. We cannot re-open New York without child care
because there is nowhere for children to go and that includes children from
infants all the way up through the teenage years.”
Assemblyman Andy Goodell joined Senator Borrello in asking
the state to release the funds.
In a letter he sent Governor Cuomo earlier this year,
Assemblyman Goodell asked the governor to follow the recommendations of his own
child-care advisors.
Assemblyman Goodell urged Governor Cuomo to release the aid
“in a manner consistent with the recommendations of your Child Care Task Force
headed by Sheila Poole, Commissioner of the Office of Children and Family
Services, and Roberta Readon, Commissioner of the Department of Labor.”
“Today I am joining Senator Borrello and Assemblyman Goodell
and officials across the state in the Childcare Day of Action to call on New
York State to release the CARES Act funding to local governments and childcare
providers,” said Chautauqua County Executive PJ Wendel. “We raised this issue
months ago, when Counties were told the Governor was not aware that counties
and local providers wanted the CARES Act funding. We requested Chautauqua
County’s share of funding at that time, and now it is even more critical that
childcare providers have access to these funds as more parents are returning to
work, and many schools are returning with instruction models requiring at least
some days of remote-learning.”
Senator Borrello said the care provided by professional
child care workers is critical to Western New York’s resurgence.
“These businesses are struggling now because their
enrollment is down due to the pandemic,” he said. “The state needs to release
the remaining CARES Act funding to ensure that our childcare providers are able
to deliver the critical service that is the foundation for the resurgence of
our economy.”
