Mayoral candidates Zohran Mamdani and Jessica Ramos used their perch as state lawmakers to challenge Mayor Adams on early childhood care, questioning the city’s closure of several childcare centers in Brooklyn and Queens as the mayor testified before state legislators in Albany on Tuesday.
The back-to-back exchanges were the first time the mayor directly faced off against his challengers as he runs for re-election in the June primary.
Adams blamed raises in rent and low enrollment numbers as reasons why the city opted not to renew the leases of the five early childhood centers, and he has said that families enrolled at the centers will be able to find placement elsewhere.
But the candidates running against Adams and local officials have challenged the city’s numbers and said the centers are located in neighborhoods starved for affordable childcare options.
“These are centers that have been operating, some of them for more than 50 years, wait lists, full enrollment, and those parents are now scrambling to find new childcare,” Assemblymember Mamdani said at the marathon budget hearing.
Adams defended his administration’s moves, saying he inherited high vacancy rates and seats left empty on taxpayers’ dime, and that some of the centers ordered to close had enrollment rates of closer to 40%.
Nuestros Niños, one of the sites slated to close, currently has 76% enrollment, or 96 children, according to a January release. The mayor said at a press briefing that just four children are enrolled in one of the centers.
“We have these five facilities that are at least 70% enrolled, and you’re proposing closing them. How do you explain that?” the progressive Queens rep asked the mayor.
“Well, I would, if I had time,” Adams said with a smile as the time buzzer sounded.
State Sen. Ramos, who represents Jackson Heights and other Queens neighborhoods, told the mayor during her line of questioning that families are struggling to find early childhood care that “makes sense with where they live and with their daily routine.”
AP
Sen. Jessica Ramos, D-East Elmhurst, talks with reporters after listening to New York Gov. (AP Photo/Hans Pennink)
“This is really where your focus should be,” Ramos said.
Adams, in turn, cited his record on lowering the cost of copays for the lowest-income families from $55 per week to less than $5 per week.
Later on, under questioning from Brooklyn State Sen. Julia Salazar, Adams said that the centers ordered to close fell short on three areas: They were under capacity, facing rent hikes and there were other early childhood care centers in the areas.
“Those five centers didn’t meet any of those items, didn’t meet those three items, I should say,” Adams said. “… We can’t have centers occupied with 40% vacancy, and you have other centers in the area, that’s just feeding that crisis that we saw when we first came in office,” the mayor said.
Last week, Schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos said the closures were primarily due to high rent prices, and she said that while some of the sites had up to 90 kids enrolled, fewer students showed up than the DOE had planned.
With Cayla Bamberger
