Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s drive to expand “free” (city-run, taxpayer-funded) preschool programs is already squeezing private-sector providers, suggesting this “transformation” is more about a government takeover of the sector than anything else.
Consider the private Manhattan day care preparing to hike prices 20% to cover higher costs for qualified workers, as city pre-K competitors push up wages.
“The teachers who are working for DOE, their salaries are much higher, so we are competing with them,” Manhattan Schoolhouse co-founder and CEO Kamila Faruki told The Post.
Yes: Public school teachers are paid much more (starting salaries: $68,900 vs. $50,000) than private-sector ones, plus with less quality control.
Of course, the United Federation of Teachers insists these 2K “instructors” get union wages and benefits; expect job protections like the ones that make even abusive K-12 “educators” so hard to fire, too.
This year’s $73 million 2-Care pilot, with just 2,000 seats across the city, is only the start.
But costs for every stage run to more than $36,000 per kid — about $13,000 more than the city average cost for private child care — with a final budget now projected at $6 billion a year.
And that’ll likely wind up even higher, once the expansion pushes private and nonprofit operators out of the preschool market entirely, so that the city program has to care for even more tots.
Except for the very wealthy, parents who need day care will have to accept whatever the city offers — or move away.
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