We applaud the City Council and the de Blasio Administration for putting the needs of New York City’s children and families first in the CFY 2020 Adopted Budget.

We want to take this opportunity to thank the Administration, Speaker Corey Johnson and members of the City Council for their commitment to ensuring that a pathway to salary parity for the city’s early education workforce will be established. Labor negotiations are actively underway and are anticipated to conclude within the coming weeks. It was the Council’s persistent advocacy that positioned salary parity not only as a fight for fairness and equity but also as an essential step in the City’s effort to create a stable and high quality 0-5 early education system for thousands of New York City children and families.

We also applaud the Administration and the City Council for prioritizing the needs of the human services sector, and we greatly appreciate their commitment to ensuring that the City adequately supports indirect costs within the sector. Importantly, the budget agreement codifies the city’s guidance on indirect reimbursement for health and human service contracts. In doing so, the budget creates a mechanism through which the City Council and the public can monitor how the city approaches reimbursement, and hold the City accountable, with the expectation that needed resources will be modified into the budget.

Finally, our analysis of the Adopted Budget reveals a wide range of critical investments championed by the City Council to protect and expand supports for the city’s children and families. We are grateful for the City Council’s leadership in ensuring that the Adopted Budget will increase and baseline the number of Bridging the Gap social workers in schools with high numbers of students living in family shelters; add an additional 4,000 after-school slots for elementary school students and restore funding for summer Schools Out New York City (SONYC); and restore funding for Breakfast in the Classroom in FY 2020 and community-based public health programs, among other investments. We are also pleased that the City Council’s advocacy resulted in increased funding for Census outreach, which will ensure a fair and accurate count and in doing so, help protect the city’s receipt of federal revenue as well as federal representation. Furthermore, numerous terms and conditions attached to the budget will help to better address the needs of some of the most vulnerable children including that the status of juveniles held in secure detention will be reported jointly via the Administration for Children’s Services and the Department of Corrections, and that regular reporting on Thrive expenditures will occur with each financial plan.