B-Roll, Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Governor Hochul Announces Child Care Expansion Pilot Partnerships With 3 Counties as Part of Statewide Investments in Universal[...]

Governor Kathy Hochul today announced the State will partner with Dutchess County, Monroe County and Broome County in a new State pilot program to help counties offer additional child care options in their communities as part of her $4.5 billion investment to deliver statewide universal child care. This pilot program will include a total of $60 million in State funding, along with new investments from each of the three counties, as they expand child care access with a particular focus on serving children 0-3.

B-ROLL of the Governor participating in classroom activities with three-year-olds and younger is available to stream on Youtube here and in TV quality video (h.264, mp4) here.

VIDEO: The event is available to stream on YouTube here and TV quality video is available here (h.264, mp4).

AUDIO: The Governor's remarks are available in audio form here.

PHOTOS: The Governor's Flickr page will post photos of the event here.

A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:

 Hello, everyone. Oh, what a wonderful gathering this morning. Thank you. I had a chance to show my play skills. I did pretty good if you asked the three and four year olds I was just with. I have a three-year-old granddaughter, almost four. So, pretty good at this. But I'm so happy to be here at DAY ONE because this is the culmination of a vision that was started years ago, which we'll talk about.

But I want to, first of all, thank all the elected leaders here first who work so hard to support their communities, the people they represent, the children they represent, and to bring that cause and that purpose to Albany as their representatives. And I want to give a shout out, first of all, to Senator Michelle Hinchey, who's done an amazing job with such passion and perseverance in fighting for the people she's proud to represent. Let's give her a round of applause.

Senator Rob Rolison. Rob, thank you very much for all your support and the Legislature, particularly on these areas that defy political boundaries. We know that every family, regardless of political affiliation - or even if there is not a political affiliation - they all have the same needs and we represent all of them. So, I appreciate you helping us here today. Assemblymember Jonathan Jacobson and Assemblymember Didi Barrett - two great champions in this region. I'm always grateful to be with you, because you do so many great things in your districts.

Always happy to see Mayor Yvonne Flowers from the great city of Poughkeepsie. Mayor of Poughkeepsie. Thank you very much. I come out of local government, so I always have an appreciation for our local officials. Thank you, Mayor. And also, my commissioners have joined me all the way from our State of the State yesterday to Dutchess County. First of all, we have our Office of Children and Family Services. Dr. Harris-Madden, I want to thank her for being such an incredible supporter of these policies, but also helping come up with these policies.

Our Commissioner of Labor, Roberta Reardon, who does everything she can to make sure that every industry has the workforce they need, including the child care industry - industry said in a loving way. It's not a factory. It is a place where we're creating new opportunities for our children, but it takes the leaders, the teachers, and others to have the skills they need to be able to step into those jobs. And also, someone who understands the power of education to change people's lives and is on the front lines every single day - that is our Commissioner of Education, Betty Rosa. I want to thank her for joining us.

So we've got the dream team here, and County Executive Sue Serino. I want to mention to people who will be in our speaking program. Sue Serino, not just hearing her official capacity as the County Executive, but also as someone who lived the experience - and she'll talk about this, but there's a reason she had to start her own at-home child care center, because, like me, when I was starting out, there were no options. And so, this is what she had to do. This is how you try to make it all work. And she's got a powerful story that shows why she's so driven to fight for this cause and to help us with something we'll be announcing today.

And we're here at DAY ONE Early Learning Center -- the Co-Founder is Gerry Laybourne. And so, she presented a vision to me and she'll talk about this. We did a round table here in Poughkeepsie, sat down together and we just talked about the shortage of trained workers and how we could take people from the community who may be benefiting from these services, who need these services, and having them help be the instructor in these services and what we're doing in these centers. So I will let her elaborate more on that, but it is a vision that I thought was brilliant and I'm so glad we could be implementing something that she dreamed of many, many years ago.

And also to have our Executive Director here who you will be hearing from her as well. Madeline Henriquez, the Executive Director who talks about her own experiences and why she understands the difference we're making in these children's lives is not just for a preschooler, three-year-old, four-year-old - these are lifelong experiences that they're going to incorporate into their everyday living when they get older because they're giving them a chance here, and that is something they otherwise would not have.

So one thing I do know, though: We know the value of this child and we know the value of centers like this - how extraordinary they are, how life changing they could be. But for too many families, it's just too big of a barrier.

I started out wanting to continue work at a place I loved on Capitol Hill, working for a senator. It was a dream job, but we couldn't find affordable, accessible child care in Washington D.C. at that time. And interesting to me is that baby and his sister, who came along a year later, are right now young parents trying to find child care.

So a generation later, not much has changed. Except here in New York, everything's just about to change.

I want to confirm that this is not a new issue for us. Since I started and was Chair of the Statewide Task Force on Child Care, and Gerry Laybourne who's a member and others are members - we've been talking about policies, but none had the breadth and the scale of what we're doing here. And over the last four years as your Governor, I've already invested, with the Legislature, $8 billion in child care, increasing -

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What we've done is when I first became Governor, we had a support system, and subsidies and vouchers for families earning less than $60,000, maybe $57,000, you could get support from the state. I said, "But there's so many families." The median income here in Poughkeepsie is $60,000. So this would've excluded the average family in a place like Poughkeepsie. And statewide, so many people were not qualifying.

So what I did was I said, "That doesn't make sense." We've increased it over a couple years to over $108,000 understanding that doesn't go as far as it should in many parts of our state - life is becoming expensive. But also trying to help the middle class as well. And so we've expanded that program. So there's now 100,000 more children participating because of those actions, and we're just getting started.

So I'm continuing those investments, and they have benefited communities from Dutchess County all the way to the North Country, and Buffalo and beyond.

But what I want to talk about today is ultimately delivering something I talked about last year, and we're on the path to get there, which is fully, universal child care for every child in the State of New York. And because promises are really only backed up by commitments of funding, we're announcing - through the program that we're unveiling here in Dutchess County - $4.5 billion this year alone to support child care programming in many different ways.

Now, first of all, every four-year-old should have access - every parent of a four-year-old should have access to a pre-K program with trained individuals running it. And we're going to guarantee that by 2028, universal 4K will be available to every child in the State of New York. And we're going to work with our school system, our schools, our local providers.

We'll get that done because too much time has already lapsed and families are making those decisions now. "Do I stay in this state? Can I afford to live here? Can I even afford to have children?" Let them make those decisions now with the confidence that the state will be their ally, their partner in helping drive down the high cost of living, hitting one of the most challenging aspects of their budget: the high cost of child care.

So that's what we're committing to. That's one element - that deals with the four-year-olds. But we're also investing $1.2 billion to double down on the voucher program and the subsidies that we have. So we already have a 40 percent increase in eligibility from last year. And what this does - this is extraordinary. This caps costs at $15 a week for families up to $114,000. That's what we're doing now. But we have to get the capacity, right? That's our commitment.

We have to get the capacity, the locations, the trained professionals to take care of them. But also, what we're talking about here today is a brand new concept. We've identified three communities across upstate to start a pilot program - pilot meaning you look at it very closely, you learn what works, what doesn't work, and then you grow it even bigger - and we're investing $20 million per county, three counties starting with Dutchess County. Also announcing Monroe County and Broome County will also be the places of innovation and an incubator to talk about how we take care of newborns up to three-year-olds. And that's through a partnership with community-based providers.

And what I want to do is have affordable, full day child care for children year-round - and that's what we're starting into. And I think this is going to be the most transformational policy of our entire state when you think about it - that we can now make it so much more affordable and take that stress off of parents. "Can I even find child care? How much is it going to cost?"

I had to stay home and give up a job I love because we figured out the math. It was cheaper for me to be the child care provider. And I didn't know when I was getting back on my career path. It was a scary, uncertain time, and my husband worked in the government. We both left higher paying jobs in the private sector following our dreams to work in public service, and we took a real hit. So I know all about going out to the big box store in the suburbs, hand clenched with coupons. How many big things of diapers I can get and the formula - carrying the cases of formula with a little baby in the cart.

I lived that. I lived that. And I want to make sure that families know we are deeply attuned to the high cost of living on them, because they have a Governor - the first mom governor [of New York] - who's been there and walked in those shoes, and understands that we have a responsibility to do more. So we're going to continue providing much needed relief for parents.

But also, the reason people need child care? So you can go to a job. So for a long time people thought, "If you want to have kids, it's your problem to figure out the child care," right? Maybe that was your choice. The economy will prosper and blossom here in the State of New York. It will be more competitive than other states when we say this is one area - we're going to take that burden off of families, and they'll be able to go into their jobs and the economy is going to be able to be on fire with more people, particularly women, be able to take their rightful places as contributors to their family income, but also to the economy of their community. That's what this is all about. The ripple effect of all this - it's extraordinary.

So let's get to work starting right here in Poughkeepsie. And I'm proud to hand this off to Sue Serino who has her own story, and I want to thank her for being such an incredible partner as we move forward to universal child care together.

Thank you.

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