Giving Compass' Take:

· Writing for CityLab, Kendra Hurley explains how universal pre-K has unintentionally driven up the cost of childcare by limiting the availability of affordable programs. 

· How has a lack of affordable childcare impacted communities? What can be done to provide better options for families and youths? 

· Read more about the expansion of universal pre-K.

Bronx daycare owner Angela Salas suspects it’s no coincidence that ever since New York City’s fre­e preschool program for three-year-olds arrived in her borough, her popular home-based child-care program has struggled.

It’s not for a lack of demand, says Salas: Her family daycare is as sought after as ever, with parents paying up to $385 a week. But with new, free public preschool available for three- and four-year-olds less than two miles away, the kids enrolling in Salas’s home-based program are now almost all very young. This makes for a costly business, as state regulation requires much heavier staffing for babies and toddlers than it does for older children. “I need to keep the three-year-olds in order to survive,” says Salas.

Salas used to hire two women at her daycare; now she needs four to meet licensing requirements. She’s raised tuition by $10 a week. It’s still not enough to make up for the cost of added staffing, she says. But if tuition goes any higher, few neighborhood parents will be able to afford it. “I don’t think I can sustain my business one more year if it continues this way,” says Salas.

All across the country, public preschool programs have been proliferating, to great fanfare. Washington, D.C.’s universal program is applauded for boosting labor-force participation of low-income mothers with young kids. And New York City’s Mayor Bill de Blasio credits his Pre-K for All program for higher test scores and a smaller ethnic and racial test-score gap among elementary school children who participated in the program.

Read the full article about the cost of early childhood education by Kendra Hurley at CityLab.