Raising New York City: 2025 for One Early Childcare Center

One woman at Grand St. Settlement shares her childcare center’s fight to keep raising New York City’s youngest.

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On a cold, cloudy Thursday afternoon in February on New York City’s City Hall steps, dozens of people gathered to rally against the closure of four early childhood centers in Brooklyn. Brightly colored, homemade posters arguing “New Yorkers Need Childcare” and “Mayor Adams Reverse Your Decision” dotted the crowd, with many naming different childcare centers affected. Some parents gathered off the steps with strollers or a child on their shoulders, chanting with everyone “Save our Schools!” Concerned parents, childcare providers, kids and City Council members filled the steps.

One woman present was Nilsa Rivera. She was there to support Grand St. Settlement, one of the childcare centers fighting to stay open that day. She first started her journey with the center as a little girl enrolled in one of their summer camp programs in the Lower East Side, where she was born and raised. 

“That was a long time ago, in the seventies,” Rivera laughed. She was bundled up for the event, with a light pink knit hat just about covering the top of her wide frame glasses. She was about to join the rally with the poster she had, dotted with red construction paper hearts and colorful cutouts of children’s hands around a picture and the address of her center, 319 Stanhope Street. 

“Grand St. is a part of me,” she said. “We would be losing so many families who are in great need of our program.”

Outlets first reported on January 17 that these childcare centers were notified that their leases would not be renewed. This came only two days after the New York City Comptroller reported that “existing publicly funded programs [did] not meet families’ needs” in the five boroughs, with a current need of 16,000 extra 3-K and Pre-K seats just to meet demand. These seats would save parents from thousands of dollars in childcare, with 2024’s average cost of $26,000 for center-based care in New York City representing “an increase of 43 percent since 2019,” according to the Comptroller’s office. 

The decision to close the centers represented at this rally also came about half a year after the Fiscal Policy Institute released a report that revealed New York “households with young children [have been]…twice as likely to move out of New York City—as households without young children” since the COVID-19 pandemic, finding that the cost of childcare was a main source of this migration. 

The Brooklyn location of Grand St. Settlement that was on the chopping block has an early childcare program that offers 3-K and Pre-K programs, along with other childhood development and family services. Some of these include mental health consultants and disability coordinators who help create plans for children who need special education. They also provide social workers to connect parents to programs as needed, like ESL classes if they know limited English. 

Nilsa’s Story

Nilsa Rivera is a family worker at the Bushwick location of Grand St. Settlement. As a family worker, she helps with what people at Grand St. call family development: supporting and helping families identify and complete goals for both the kids and the parents which could range from improving speech skills in class to getting a GED. She does this to get parents involved in school and at home to cater to each child’s needs. Her days vary depending on how many parents meet with her for a number of reasons. 

“The phone has been attached to my ear,” she said one day while spending the day helping parents find the right kindergarten to enroll their children into after growing out of Grand St.’s Pre-K program. She said that in between helping people with kindergarten application paperwork and occasionally walking with groups of parents to open houses at nearby schools, “tons of parents need to come in and just chat.”

“Sometimes they just need someone to talk to,” she said.

Rivera started working at Grand St. in 2020 after being a family worker for other childcare initiatives and programs for 35 years. She said she brought a passion for connecting with children and their families that she realized she had when she was 21 and still in school with plans to be a lawyer. She said at first, she started out as a counselor because she needed a job while she was going to school.

“But then that was the moment when I really took a look at the sacrifices that my mom did,” she said. “Now I know why mom needed to put me in summer camp years ago.”

Rivera’s mother, a single mom of four, chose Grand St.’s location in the Lower East Side to enroll Nilsa in its summer camp. Over 50 years later, Rivera said she found her return to Grand St. a way to continue working in the field she loves.

“I love children,” she said. “I love helping and being part of a village.”

Valerie Agostini, Educational Director at Grand St. Settlement, said hiring Rivera was an easy choice.

“When I gave her the call, she was so genuine. I fell in love with her instantly,” she said. “She has this way of speaking to the families and just making them feel like this is their second home.”

Agostini said that this connection that Rivera helps Grand St. build with families outside of school hours is what makes their program essential to their community. When parents come in to enroll their children, Agostini said that they cater to the parents’ needs as well to strengthen the whole family.

“If we see a parent that comes in with limited English, we connect them with…[an] English as a Second Language class. If a family comes here and they don’t have a high school diploma, we connect them to a program that can give them a high school equivalency,” she said. “If this program was to close down, that would mean that children will not receive free summer programming, they will not receive their free after school programming…it’s not just a babysitting company.”

The Fight to Stay Open

According to Grand St., it currently has full enrollment at 75 children. Among the other early childhood centers represented at the rally was Nuestros Niños, which says it is at around 80% enrollment with 96 students. In late January, the City Education Department said Nuestros Niños and Grand St. were among a group that were not getting their leases renewed due to low enrollment. Although this was the case, New York City Mayor Eric Adams decided that the city “had far too many centers that were being opened and [it] didn’t have pupils in there,” hence the Department of Education’s decision to not renew the leases.

Agostini said that four families this year alone have gone to Grand St. after being turned away from other programs due to their children having special needs, and that many people in their community depend on the free childcare Grand St. provides. 

On Agostini’s desk sat two thick orange envelopes titled “For Mayor Adams,” filled with letters that poured in from families when they heard that the Department of Education decided not to renew Grand St.’s lease for the next school year. Agostini lay a few of them across the table. They showed how many parents wrote about how Grand St. teachers and faculty helped their children open up after being isolated during the pandemic. One couple wrote that their son “truly blossomed” at Grand St. after spending his first few years of life in their house during the pandemic, which left him “shy” and “slow to connect” with people. 

One mother taking her son home from Pre-K said Grand St. helped her family as well. “He was at a different daycare, he didn’t talk. He didn’t express,” said Jaqueline Ortiz. After some testing and getting a recommendation to switch childcare centers, Ortiz brought him to Grand St. “He came here, same thing, he wasn’t talking for a week, but then he just opened up.”

So when the portal to enroll students closed, workers at Grand St. said that many of these parents made it clear they were devastated and not going down without a fight. After Grand St. received hundreds of petitions and letters, and had parents leave work for the day to join teachers, family workers, and faculty to rally with other childcare centers affected, the Adams administration reversed its decision on Valentine’s Day. The five New York City childcare centers slated for closure would stay open through the following school year “after the Adams administration engaged in positive conversations with stakeholders, including the landlords and providers of the sites, parents, elected officials, and other community members,” read a statement from the mayor’s office. 

The Road Ahead

Rivera said she wanted parents to feel empowered after this experience.

“We made it very clear to parents, it is because of you, your voice, they heard your voice, not only ours,” she said. “We always want parents to make sure that they were a big part of this, that they influence this to happen…by your petitions, your letters, your concerns.”

One of these parents is Melina Gonzalez, who used to be a teacher at Grand St. and now has her daughter enrolled. Gonzalez, who was at the City Hall rally, said the decision to bring her daughter back to Grand St. after she stopped working there herself was easy.

“My first thought was, step into action, what can we do, how can we help,” she said. “The families in this community need this program.”

Some reports credit this type of pressure before this year’s mayoral election for Adams’ recent announcement—a reversal of $167 million in planned cuts for seats for 3-year-olds and students with disabilities in the city’s next fiscal budget. According to reporting from the Gothamist, “multiple members of the New York City Council…said the funding still falls far short of meeting families’ needs,” but called the move “positive.”

Throughout and after Grand St.’s personal fight to keep its doors open, Rivera called the community she helps serve a village, a group of people—both children and parents alike—with potential no matter what their circumstances.

“There are people who are amazing, and it’s like hidden figures, nobody knows about them,” said Rivera. “And this is one of the things that I try to teach all my parents. Never be afraid, advocate for yourself. You are a strong voice, and you know this.”

Rivera says these unsung heroes are what drive her passion to work with people so that all members of each family she works with can reach their full potential. 

Although Rivera does not have any children of her own, she says feels like those she works with have become like family.

“Look at all the babies I have now!” she laughed, throwing her arms open. “I have all kinds of kids. It’s beautiful to walk down the street and hear a child call your name and say, ‘hey, Miss Nilsa!’ You turn around, you see this young man with a mustache and a beard…even though it makes you feel old.”

“It’s an amazing feeling to know I’m marking his world,” Rivera said with a smile.