2025-26 New York State Budget
The BT3 coalition was actively engaged during this year’s legislative session ensuring that our rural families’ needs and wants were considered through months of dedicated advocacy, including legislative meetings, letter-writing campaigns, budget testimony, and advocacy days. We are proud of our collective efforts and the impact they’ve had on this year’s final budget outcomes.
Child Care Assistance Program:
The 2025-2026 New York State final budget includes funding that is a direct result of our partnership with Hinman Straub and our advocacy efforts. Most noteworthy is additional $400 million dollars of funding for the Child Care Assistance Program, New York’s child care subsidy program. $50 million of that is earmarked for rest-of-state while $350 million is prioritized for New York City. Without our interactions with and education provided to legislators, we believe there would have been no additional funding made available to areas of the state outside of New York City.
We continue to be active in Child Care Assistance Program discussions post-budget. Specifically regarding the inequitable distribution of funds. Rural counties, who are often fiscally conservative and with increased populations living in poverty, typically receive less funding year over year when compared to other counties across New York state. We are also discussing regional solutions to address the current crisis and ensure families and child care providers weather this storm.
Other child care investments:
We appreciate the Governor’s creation of the Child Care Capital Grant which will provide funding for the construction and renovation of child care facilities, including $10 million to family and group family child care programs; however, we are saddened that there was no additional investment made in the workforce. Until providers are paid a consistent, liveable wage, the challenge of recruiting and retaining individuals to staff the existing, newly constructed or renovated buildings will remain.
We are encouraged by the authorization to establish child care substitute pools. This pilot program will explore ways for child care programs to access a pool of trained and vetted individuals to serve as substitutes. We look forward to monitoring the program’s progress over the next several years.
Early Intervention:
Outside of child care, It is disappointing that additional rate increases for early intervention providers were not included in this year’s budget. Last year’s rate increases have still not been seen by providers and there has been little mention of the rural rate modifier which was anticipated to start in April. Early intervention providers have not seen a rate increase since the 1990s. Early intervention is critical. The services are a child’s first exposure to specialized developmental supports and have been found to reduce future special education needs and educational costs.
Early intervention was a major focus of our advocacy efforts this year and will continue to be next year. We plan to increase our parent engagement through partnership with the Children’s Agenda’s Kids Can’t Wait campaign and look forward to sharing the findings of our early intervention cost modeling effort completed in partnership with Prenatal to Five Fiscal Strategies.
Funding to Critical Partners:
Back to good news – We are excited to see level funding for Help Me Grow New York, our resource and referral agencies, as well as some of our biggest partners including Healthy Families and QUALITYstarsNY. These investments will ensure that our region’s families can continue to access quality services and some of our greatest partners can continue their good work.
We will continue to monitor federal activities. It is anticipated that the NYS legislature will reconvene this fall if proposed federal cuts come to fruition. We will continue to convene coalition members to offer support through the ever-changing federal landscape.
To read more about this year’s New York state budget and how it impacts our region’s families, click here. If you’re curious how the final budget compares to the proposed executive budget, check out this document.
