Universal Childcare is a Big Win for Teachers, Too
What goes on outside the classroom matters to teacher WAY more than you ,or they, think.
Buzz and accolades surrounded the recent universal childcare announcement. And rightly so. In response to Governor Hochul and Mayor Mamdani’s announcements, much of the commentary has focused on the economic benefits to the city: parents, especially mothers who tend to shoulder child-related logistics, will be able to dedicate more energy to work thereby lifting the city’s economy and their family’s well-being. But there is another crucial beneficiary of universal childcare missing from the chatter: teachers.
In some ways, this might seem counterintuitive: Why would teachers benefit much from a program that, by definition, focuses on out-of-school time?
Numbers Don’t Lie
As a nod to our new Chancellor’s background as a math teacher, let’s use some simple calculations to answer that question. Roughly speaking, students are required to be in school 180 days a year for approximately 6 hours a day, which amounts to 1,080 hours a year. Sounds like a lot, right? It’s not. There are 8,760 hours in the calendar year. That means students are only in school for a little over 12% of their lives each year.
Students spend 88% of their time out of school.
It’s the paradox of education reform: you can’t reform education by focusing alone on schools; you can’t improve student outcomes by focusing alone on teachers. Students’ out-of-school lives in their communities and with their families have a disproportionate impact on their readiness for the classroom. Safe streets, loving homes, healthy meals, and creative outlets all combine to ensure children arrive in school open and ready to learn.
My Always-Late-Student
When out-of-school factors go unaddressed, teachers often shoulder the responsibility for making up the difference and ensuring that their students succeed anyway. It is too often an impossible task. I experienced this first hand as a high school English teacher in Manhattan. One of my students arrived for my first period class twenty minutes late every day. When I asked him what was going on, he shared that his parents needed him to work late at the family restaurant to make ends meet. I was able to get him to arrive fifteen minutes late and then ten minutes late and then ultimately he came on time. But he was still exhausted; his parents didn’t answer my calls.
In the near future, teachers in our city might well be able to do their jobs with greater effectiveness and efficiency than ever before as the benefits of universal child care manifest. More students will be ready physically and emotionally for learning. More parents will have the bandwidth to communicate with teachers and participate in school governance and events.
But that future state will not happen automatically. Something else needs to be done--and soon.
Call it The Mamdani Plan
If the new mayor and chancellor are going to ensure real impact from this historic opportunity, they will need to do something no other administration has been able to pull off: build a true bridge between parents and school, from birth to graduation. There are some signs that officials know such ambitious bridge-building is needed. Chancellor Samuels has signaled that the role of parent coordinators--unsung heroes of our system who serve as a school’s single point of contact for families--will be getting refreshed resources. Mayor Mamdani spoke recently about fortifying the official mechanisms in the city for parents to get involved and have their voices heard. All excellent materials for building the needed bridge.
However, if the bridge is going to really be effective, the mayor and chancellor must quickly assert its length, ensuring it has a span of eighteen years. That is right: eighteen years. Many mayoral initiatives in New York City education tend to be short-term programs, not comprehensive plans. They are designed with more like an eighteen-month span focused on accomplishing something that officials can point to as a victory in time to fundraise and campaign for re-relection. It is a sad side-effect of mayoral control that merits refinement.
What has been missing over the past two administrations is a comprehensive eighteen-year plan for children that spans from the moment a child is born to the moment a child is supposed to walk across the graduation stage. Such a plan would ask: What do families, teachers, and researchers say children need both in school and out of school from ages zero to eighteen? What role will every city agency, New York City Public Schools being one, play in making sure children and families get what they need at each age level? How do we coordinate agencies to provide precisely what children and families need when they need it? Universal childcare is one crucial part of that plan. Universal Pre-K and other early childhood programs is another part. NYC Reads yet another. Now is the time to put it all together. Heck, call it the Mamdani Plan.
Why Now
We as a city have not yet been able to traverse the stubborn achievement gap successfully because we haven’t had a strategic bridge of sufficient design and span. As someone who has worked in New York City education for over twenty years, I can tell you that our teachers have shouldered much of the bridge-less burden. But if we use the questions above to drive aggressive plan development process right now, Governor Hochul and Mayor Mamdani might just be able to say they did not just improve test scores but that they improved the education system itself. With that accomplishment will likely come re-election, yes. But more importantly, they will secure something of arguably even greater value: legacy.