Testimony Early Childhood Education Regarding 2-K Implementation
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On October 7th, 2026, Grand Street Settlement CEO Robert Cordero joined fellow esteemed child care advocates to speak to the New York City Council Subcommittee on Early Childhood Education regarding 2-K Implementation.
You can read Robert's testimony below to learn more about Grand Street's recommendations on building a sustainable child care system with a strong foundation.
Testimony of Robert Cordero, CEO of Grand Street Settlement
Good morning, Chair Gutiérrez and members of the Subcommittee. Thank you for the opportunity to testify on 2k implementation.
My name is Robert Cordero, and I am the Chief Executive Officer of Grand Street Settlement, a 110-year-old community-based nonprofit organization. We currently serve approximately 20,000 children, families, older adults, and communities. We serve 1,461 preschoolers across 14 center-based locations, and we partner with 50 family child care providers across the Lower East Side, Brooklyn, and the Bronx.
Grand Street supports the City’s goal of expanding access to affordable child care through 2-K. But as we move from vision to implementation, we need to make sure we are building a sustainable child care system—not simply adding seats.
Every child care seat requires a qualified educator, adequate operating funding, appropriate space, and a provider with the capacity and community relationships to deliver high-quality care.
Grand Street has three clear recommendations.
First, invest in the workforce. That means competitive wages, compensation parity, retention, and tuition-free education, apprenticeships, fellowships, and career pathways that help build the early childhood workforce New York City will need.
Second, fund the true cost of care and pay providers on time. Providers cannot sustainably expand while managing inadequate reimbursement, delayed payments, and operating costs that continue to rise.
Third, build 2-K through New York City’s existing community-based early childhood system. Qualified community-based organizations and family child care providers should be central to expansion, along with the capital and facilities investment necessary to create new capacity without destabilizing existing infant, toddler, 3-K, and UPK services.
Universal child care can be transformative for New York City. But success should not be measured only by how many seats we create. It should be measured by whether families can depend on those seats, educators can build careers in them, and providers can sustain them.
Grand Street is ready to be a partner in building that system.
DETAILED RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE COUNCIL RECORD
1. INVEST IN THE EARLY CHILDHOOD WORKFORCE
New York City cannot build a universal child care system without a workforce capable of sustaining it.
Early childhood educators, directors, family child care providers, and frontline staff are the backbone of this system. Yet persistent compensation inequities continue to make it difficult for providers to recruit and retain qualified staff.
This is both a workforce equity issue and a quality issue. When providers cannot recruit and retain qualified educators, classrooms become more difficult to staff, programs become less stable, and families experience the consequences.
As 2-K expands, the City should:
• Provide competitive wages and meaningful salary increases for the early childhood workforce.
• Advance compensation parity across publicly funded early childhood programs. • Expand tuition-free education pathways, fellowships, and apprenticeships. • Strengthen recruitment pipelines into early childhood education.
• Support retention, professional development, and career advancement.
• Ensure workforce investments are recurring and sustainable rather than dependent on one-time initiatives.
Workforce investment is not separate from child care expansion. It is the infrastructure that makes expansion possible.
2. FUND THE TRUE COST OF CARE AND PAY PROVIDERS PROMPTLY
Providers cannot sustainably expand child care while absorbing the difference between public reimbursement and the actual cost of delivering high-quality services.
Funding must reflect the real and recurring costs of operating programs, including salaries and benefits, occupancy, insurance, utilities, food, supplies, administration, and regulatory compliance.
The City should:
• Establish reimbursement rates that reflect the true cost of providing high-quality care.
• Ensure prompt and predictable payment to contracted providers.
• Create multi-year funding structures that allow organizations to plan, hire, and expand responsibly.
• Adjust funding to account for increases in wages, occupancy, insurance, and other operating expenses.
• Simplify contracting, reimbursement, and compliance processes that unnecessarily consume provider resources.
Providers should not be expected to finance the public child care system through organizational reserves, delayed reimbursement, or chronic underfunding.
3. DEVELOP A CITYWIDE CHILD CARE FACILITIES AND CAPACITY STRATEGY
Expanding child care requires physical space.
Many nonprofit providers operate in older facilities that require significant repairs or renovations. Other neighborhoods simply do not have enough licensed early childhood space to meet demand.
Providers cannot be expected to shoulder the capital costs of expanding a public child care system.
The City should develop a Child Care Facilities and Capacity Expansion Strategy that:
• Identifies existing child care facilities that can be renovated, expanded, or repurposed.
• Prioritizes capital investment in communities where additional capacity is most needed.
• Coordinates child care planning with affordable housing and other public development initiatives.
• Provides public capital resources for renovations, expansion, and new facilities.
• Works directly with experienced community-based providers to identify viable growth opportunities.
If the City wants 2-K to grow, capital investment must accompany operating investment.
4. BUILD ON AND PRIORITIZE THE EXISTING COMMUNITY-BASED EARLY CHILDHOOD SYSTEM
New York City should build 2-K through the organizations and providers that families already know and trust.
Community-based organizations are not simply program operators. We are community institutions. Our relationships with families often extend beyond a single child care program and connect families to benefits, health care, housing assistance, youth programs, older adult services, and other supports.
That community infrastructure matters.
As 2-K expands, qualified community-based providers and family child care providers should be central partners in implementation.
Expansion should strengthen the provider network that has built and sustained early childhood services across New York City for generations rather than create a parallel system disconnected from that infrastructure.
5. PROTECT THE BROADER EARLY CHILDHOOD ECOSYSTEM
Expansion of care for two-year-olds must strengthen the entire early childhood system.
New investments should not unintentionally reduce infant and toddler capacity, destabilize family child care, or undermine existing 3-K and Pre-K programs.
The City should:
• Evaluate the impact of 2-K expansion across the full birth-to-five system. • Protect existing infant and toddler capacity.
• Preserve and strengthen family child care.
• Avoid shifting staff or resources in ways that destabilize existing 3-K and Pre-K classrooms.
• Coordinate enrollment, licensing, workforce, and facilities planning across early childhood programs.
The experience of the Birth-to-2 Initiative provides an important lesson. Funding alone does not automatically create capacity. Providers also need appropriate facilities, licenses, qualified staff, and operational infrastructure before public investment can become an actual seat for a child.
6. CREATE AN ONGOING PROVIDER ENGAGEMENT PROCESS
The organizations operating early childhood programs understand the practical challenges that do not always appear in a policy document: staffing, enrollment, facilities, reimbursement, administrative requirements, family engagement, and the daily realities of operating programs.
The City should establish an ongoing mechanism for community-based providers, family child care providers, frontline educators, and families to help shape implementation of 2-K.
That engagement should happen early—not simply after problems emerge.
Providers should have a meaningful seat at the table as the City develops procurement, reimbursement, workforce, facilities, and enrollment strategies.
CONCLUSION
New York City has an opportunity to build something transformative for children and families.
But universal child care cannot simply mean creating more seats. It must mean creating a system that families can depend on, educators can build careers in, and community-based providers can sustain over the long term.
That requires investment in people, adequate and timely funding, investment in facilities, protection of the broader early childhood system, and genuine partnership with the organizations and communities that have been doing this work for generations.
Grand Street Settlement is committed to being a partner in that work, and we look forward to continuing to work with the City Council, the Administration, and our colleagues across the early childhood field to make universal child care a sustainable reality for New York City families.
