We are pleased that Governor Hochul is proposing new investments in child care and public education in this year’s budget. Accessible, high-quality child care and strong public schools are essential to making New York an affordable, appealing place to raise a family. But to make the promise of these proposals real for all New Yorkers, the State must ensure that expanded early childhood programs fully include children with disabilities and that our schools have the resources necessary to meet the needs of students facing the greatest barriers to success in school.

As the State and the City move forward with plans to strengthen 3-K and expand early learning programs for toddlers, it is essential that these programs be accessible to children with developmental delays and disabilities. Both the Governor and Mayor Mamdani have promised as much, but past expansions of early childhood education have shown that good intentions are no guarantee of equity and promises often fall short. As of May 2025, in New York City alone, more than 600 children were waiting for seats in their legally mandated preschool special education classes and more than 7,000 preschoolers with disabilities were waiting for one or more of their services to begin—services the school district had determined were necessary for them to receive an appropriate education. And just last week, the City projected a shortage of several hundred preschool special education seats for this spring. 3-K is not “for all” if three-year-olds with autism are sitting at home because there are no classes that can meet their needs. Child care is not universal if families of children with disabilities are turned away.

We appreciate the Governor’s proposed investments in K–12 education, including funding for high-intensity tutoring, teacher recruitment, and literacy instruction. At the same time, such investments must be paired with meaningful updates to the State’s education funding formula. While Governor Hochul and the State Legislature took an important step by fully funding the Foundation Aid formula for the first time in 2023 and while we appreciate that the Governor is proposing to fully fund the formula again this year, the formula itself remains sorely outdated. The limited changes made in FY 2026—and continued in this year’s budget proposal—have resulted in New York City schools receiving hundreds of millions of dollars less from Albany to support low-income students. The State should address the failures of last year’s budget by making changes to the formula that better reflect student needs and rising costs, including:

1. Adding a Foundation Aid weight for students who are homeless and students in foster care. More than 154,000 students in New York City experienced homelessness in 2024–25, but the formula currently provides no additional funding to help schools address the unique challenges such students face.
2. Updating the Regional Cost Index (RCI), which is intended to account for variation in costs in different parts of the state but has not been updated in more than 15 years.

More than 120 organizations, along with elected officials, have called for these critical reforms.

If New York is serious about affordability, it must ensure that families can rely on inclusive early childhood education and fully funded public schools. We look forward to working with state leaders to strengthen these investments and ensure they meet the needs of all children and families.