Joseph asks about system assessment before expansion

As you continue to capture data to kind of move this system along, I hear a lot of expansion, but are we looking at the system as a whole to assess, to see where you have your gaps, where we've made mistakes?

How do we correct it before we expand?

Expansion is great.

I know parents need this seat, but as an agency, how are you assessing, do I have enough educators, enough providers, enough related services, enough of everything to meet the needs of this moment?

Are you looking at the system as a whole and evaluating?

As an educator, that's what I did.

You have to assess and then policy, funding will come into play.

Talk to me about what are you thinking.

Yeah, absolutely.

I think as a city, we are trying to balance a few competing factors.

From the family perspective, as you said, we cannot do this fast enough.

Families are struggling mightily, and we know that the lack of affordable child care is driving families out of the city and driving them to make impossible choices every day.

And so from a family affordability point of view, you know, we cannot go fast enough.

But we know that we have real challenges.

in the system today.

We know that we need as a city to do more to support our early childhood providers and educators.

We need to address longstanding gaps in wages and pay and some of the systems issues that you and the other council members have brought up today.

So our goal is to do both in parallel.

We are looking closely at systems.

We are, as the Deputy Chancellor referenced, really trying to spend more time talking with providers and making sure we're bringing them into these conversations sooner so that way their perspective is informing the ways in which we go about this expansion.