By Brigid Bergin and Jessica Gould vis Gothamist

More than two years after the schools chancellor pledged to expedite payments to child care providers through a “rapid response” team, a top New York City education official said Thursday that the city is struggling to manage a huge backlog of invoices.

Deputy Chancellor Simone Hawkins testified before the City Council that she could not put a number on the amount of outstanding invoices or how much money is owed. She attributed the backlog in part to a switch in payment processing systems last year.

“ We are looking right now to release a new system that we hope will improve not just our turnaround time on payments, but also allow providers to see where they are in the queue,” Hawkins said. “Sometimes, not knowing…or knowing is half the battle.”

The City Council hearing centered on the city’s sudden plans to close five child care centers in Brooklyn and Queens, followed by that decision’s reversal after public pressure granting the centers a one-year reprieve. But the ordeal also showed that problems with payments to early child care providers persist despite the Adams administration’s promises to fix them years ago.

The city owes several of the centers on the chopping block millions of dollars in back payments. Hawkins acknowledged that the city needed to improve its overall payment processes.

City Councilmember Crystal Hudson of Brooklyn repeatedly asked why the Young Minds program at the Fort Greene Council was still owed more than $500,000 from approved invoices dating back to 2020. The Fort Greene Council is among the five early child care centers the city recently threatened with closure.

Hawkins said a change in the system the Department of Education used to process invoices triggered the delay. The DOE officially migrated to the PASSport system in July.

“ How many providers are still stuck in that old system?” asked Councilmember Rita Joseph, who chairs the Council’s education committee. She also asked how much money is owed to the providers.

Hawkins did not know. But she said the onus was also on providers to tell the city if they were missing payments.

“ We need to do better at communicating and working with providers so they can do what they need to do in the back office,” Hawkins said. “But in some cases, we also do not get information so we can do the part that we need to do to move the process forward.”

Providers have been raising alarms about payment delays for years. In fall 2022, the Citizens Committee for Children said centers citywide were owed $400 million in back payments, many from the previous school year, forcing providers to take out loans to pay their staff or shutter. One provider, Sheltering Arms, a 200-year-old nonprofit that operated a preschool, shut down completely.

At the time, then-Schools Chancellor David Banks promised to expedite reimbursements with a new “rapid response” team. “We are going to stabilize the system to honor the promise that has been made to families and providers,” Banks said.

But at Thursday’s hearing preschool providers said they don’t understand why they have to be reimbursed on the backend rather than paid upfront.

Ingrid Matias Chungata, director at Nuestros Niños, testified that her contract is caught in an ongoing back-and-forth with the Department of Education. Without a registered contract for this school year, she can’t get the city to pay for services she is currently providing.

She said she was forced to apply for a no-interest bridge loan from the Department of Education to ensure she could make payroll because the agency is sitting on her contract.

“We have nothing — 52 years of savings, of having a cushion, it’s all gone,” Matias Chungata said, choking up during her testimony to the Council.

Adams administration officials have said the delayed payments were part of broader dysfunction within the early childhood system that they blamed on former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration.

They said the former administration expanded the city’s free school program haphazardly, oversaturating some areas of the city with seats while leaving gaps in others. On top of that, they said, some of that expansion relied on stimulus funding that has now expired.

But education advocates have slammed the mayor for backing away from the full expansion of free preschool for 3-year-olds promised by his predecessor. Fights over funding for early childhood programs have erupted during the last several budget cycles. Hawkins confirmed at the hearing that the city doesn’t plan to add any more seats for 3-K this year.

The mayor’s preliminary budget includes a reduction of approximately $200 million in funding for early childhood education following the expiration of the federal stimulus funds. Advocates are lobbying to have that funding added back in before the budget deadline at the end of June.