JAMESTOWN, N.Y. — State University of New York Chancellor Jim Malatras announced on Monday the launch of a child care expansion imitative at all SUNY Campus Centers.
The four-pronged approach includes a paid internship program for students enrolled in the early childhood program that would give them hands-on experience.
SUNY administration will be providing assistance to help campuses secure federal funding to start the programs in addition to $125,000 of funding from SUNY to improve the quality of campus childcare centers. Currently, 70% of SUNY campus child care centers have received accreditation with the National Association for the Education of Young Children or participate in QUALITYstarsNY.
The last prong of the plan is to launch an awareness campaign to connect current SUNY campus child care center employees to existing scholarship programs to retain employees.
“Essential to our SUNY for All campaign is breaking down barriers to accessing higher education. The lack of child care is a major barrier for our student parents who must choose child care over classes, or faculty who want to teach but face constraints because of the lack of child care,” Malatras said. “Investing in child care is not only good for the individual student, it makes economic sense. We have tens of thousands of open jobs in New York State and we need to close skill gaps to get individuals into the workforce. They shouldn’t have to choose between child care and economic opportunity.
During the previous academic school year, SUNY served 1,200 student parents with 4,000 child care spots across 46 SUNY campuses. About a third of the spots were used by other community members who were not students.