Brooklyn – Just a few minutes before Shabbos on Friday night, the City Council reached a deal with the Bloomberg administration to restore two-thirds of the funding for city-subsidized child care ensuring that the frum community would continue to have a voucher program in place for the upcoming school year. Councilman David G. Greenfield thanked Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Council Finance Chairman Domenic Recchia for restoring an additional $25 million to the child care budget to guarantee that child care would continue to benefit all communities in New York, including the frumcommunity. Greenfield went on to laud the work of his colleagues Council Members Steve Levin, Brad Lander, Lew Fidler and Letitia James all of whom, in Greenfield’s words, “fought day and night to restore funding for child care.”

“This was a textbook example of how to successfully fight City Hall,” explained Councilman Greenfield. “With the combined hishtadlus of my colleagues in the Council, the leaders of our mosdos, and the extraordinary efforts of thousands of yeshiva parents, who combined made more than 6,000 phone calls to the Mayor’s office, we were able to safeguard child care for over ten thousand children – including thousands of Jewish children – who would have been left without child care under the Mayor’s original proposed budget.”

The details of the budget deal are being finalized, but under the Council-negotiated deal children between the ages of 0 and 4 will be able to remain in contracted care. If those children previously received child care through a voucher, they will be offered a contracted care slot instead. Every child between the ages of 5 and 12 with a child care voucher this year will be able to keep their voucher next year. In order to close the budget gap, that voucher will now be worth 60% of the original value.

This is welcome relief to thousands of parents who were told that the voucher program was ending and their only option was a slot in an inferior Out of School Time (OST) program. More problematic was the fact that the Orthodox community did not have enough OST slots to accommodate the thousands of children who would lose their vouchers and be eligible for OST. That’s why 15 council members fired off a letter to Deputy Mayor Linda Gibbs two weeks ago informing her that the Mayor’s original child care proposal would discriminate against Orthodox Jews.

“This newly negotiated agreement guarantees that the frum community will have the same access to child care next year as every other community,” explained Councilman Greenfield. “This is a major victory and a complete 180 degree shift from the administration’s original position. At a time when our city is facing billions of dollars in cuts, keeping the voucher system intact will allow us to continue serving our community with safe, affordable child care. When the city’s financial situation improves, we will fight to add value back to these vouchers.”

In addition to preserving vouchers, over two-thirds of the classrooms that were eliminated from contracted care will be restored through a formula that will be determined in the coming days.

“I am grateful to Speaker Quinn for recognizing the unique needs of the Orthodox community and working to ensure that the community receives its fair share of child care,” noted Councilman Greenfield. “I look forward to continuing to work with the Speaker and my colleagues in the council to meet the growing need for safe and affordable child care for all of New York’s children.”

(YWN Desk – NYC)