New York City’s teachers union is unveiling a new website today it’s calling a digital “matchmaker” for parents and child care providers.
United Federation of Teachers members have been able to access the “NYC Childcare Navigator” since last year, and the union is now opening it up to the public.
“It’s hard enough living in the city of New York,” UFT President Michael Mulgrew said. “And we understand how life-changing it can be for a family if they can get access to high-quality, safe child care.”
The city’s child care landscape is notoriously complex and expensive, with a range of private, home-based, center-based and public options. According to a report from the 5 Boro Institute last year, 80% of families struggle to cover the costs of full-time care, while providers labor under “razor-thin” margins that have pushed some out of business.
Policy makers and advocates say child care is a central piece of the affordability crisis driving families out of the city, threatening to destabilize the tax base and the public school system.
The UFT has 200,000 members, including 8,000 home care providers and thousands of teachers who work in early childhood education. The union decided to pay for the database as a way to support two segments of its members: Early education providers and teachers struggling with finding care for their children.
The teachers union contracted with developers Upfront and Mirza to knit together disparate datasets so that parents can now search by distance, cost, hours, program type, special needs and languages. Then parents can also enter financial information to learn what kind of financial support is available. All the program options that come up through the navigator are licensed, but parents are encouraged to visit the centers to vet them.
Ernest Suarez, who lives in the Bronx and is a paraprofessional at Ella Baker Elementary School on the Upper East Side, said he used to rely on his mother to care for his 1-year-old, and his son in high school served as a backup.
“It’s very challenging finding child care with the income I have,” he said. Paraprofessionals make roughly $30,000 to $55,000 a year.
But Suarez said the arrangement was tenuous, and often fell apart when his mother was sick or his son had conflicts because of school. He said a colleague told him about the navigator, where he was surprised to learn he qualified for a subsidy. “I went hunting and chose the one that was best,” he said.
Dana Levin-Robinson, founder and CEO of Upfront, stitched together lists of child care providers from multiple licensing agencies from the state and city to unite upwards of 12,000 options. She said she was motivated by how challenging it was to find care for her own children. “It’s everything in a single location instead of having to go to the different websites,” said Levin-Robinson.
She partnered with Siran Cao, founder and chief executive of Mirza, which then layered in available subsidies, vouchers and other financial supports. “We really want to resolve the confusion and fragmentation and get those meaningful programs to parents,” she said.
Mulgrew said the platform also helps providers, including union members who are day care providers, publicize open spots so they can be fully enrolled. In recent years, city officials have complained of an uneven landscape where some areas have too many providers, while others don’t have enough.
Mulgrew hopes the platform will also be able to inform policymakers about utilization so they can target areas where demand outstrips supply. “It helps see where the gaps are,” he said.
