Hundreds of children, parents and advocates delivered nearly 30,000 petitions via “Little Red Wagon” to City Hall yesterday calling on Mayor Bloomberg and the City Council to fully restore funding to child care and after school programs. Over 50 education professors also released a letter to the Mayor and the Speaker of the City Council calling on them to protect child care funding because of its importance in children’s readiness for further education. The Mayor’s Executive Budget released on May 6 makes significant cuts to child care, leaving thousands of low-income children without access to care, say advocates.   (Click here to see the wagon!)

“We need to be committed as a City to preparing our kids to learn on that first day of school. That’s something every parent knows and certainly something an ‘Education Mayor’ should understand,” said Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, who today delivered 3,773 signatures to City Hall from parents opposing childcare cuts. “This budget consigns an entire generation of New York City kids to inferior childcare—and in some cases no childcare at all—during those first critical years of their development. The parents of this city cannot let that happen.”

“The fact that we delivered nearly 30,000 petitions today shows just how much child care means to New York City’s communities,” said Reverend Emma Jordan-Simpson, Executive Director of Children’s Defense Fund-NY. “The Mayor and the City Council must restore funding to child care so that no child is deprived of care, no parent is forced to choose between child care and going to work, and no child care providers lose their jobs.”

Last week, a supermajority of the City Council sent a letter to the Mayor urging him to take immediate action to support working parents and their children by restoring funding to vital youth programs and services. “The dramatic cuts in funding to both the Out-of-School-Time (OST) and subsidized child-care systems will wreak havoc on the lives of those low-income working families who rely on these services for survival,” the letter said. And advocates maintain that the poorest neighborhoods with the highest unemployment rates, lowest median income levels, and the most students not meeting state and city reading standards are hit the hardest.

“We have not given up this fight because child care has not been saved,” said Chair of the City Council General Welfare Committee Annabel Palma. “Every child deserves an early education and every parent deserves safe, affordable options – that’s why the final budget must restore all cuts to child care.”

“I send my children to a day care center that I trust, a center that I myself attended as a child, and where the providers are like family to me,” said Elizabeth Villafane, a nurse’s aide and mother of 3 from Coney Island. “I was devastated when I got a letter that this center would close in June. They told me not to worry, ACS would find a solution. ACS told me to enroll the children in another center, but all the centers in Coney Island have waiting lists. What no one can tell me is, what am I supposed to do?”

“To address the achievement gap, the city should be working to strengthen quality early childhood education opportunities, not eliminating them,” said Education Professor Beverly Falk.

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