Robert Cordero details bureaucratic impediments to expansion

All right, so just from a provider perspective, we're ready.

The biggest impediments, especially settlement houses and groups that have been doing this for a long time since the inception of the Head Start program and even before that for many of us, is

bureaucratic issues.

You know, delays right now, we had Emmy visit.

She's the, yeah.

Emmy visited one of the early head starts.

They're always still here.

I got to give them credit.

They always stick around.

Yeah, you stick around.

They always do.

The one-year-olds are in the classrooms, right?

You saw an empty classroom this summer, and that's early head start.

And we use a combination of federal direct head start funding.

With Citi, whatever they call it now, the transitional money that was right.

And so I think there are many providers with capacity, and the impediments for us have been DOH or an FDNY inspection or those of us that are in NYCHA facilities like we are, for example.

The much easier for us, honestly, are in private facilities where we have a landlord, we negotiate a deal, and we can build it out directly to code and get through things much more quickly.

But I think partnerships with the big agencies like NYCHA, like the Department of Building, to be able to really, really streamline this in an interagency way would be...

so beneficial to providers large and small.

It is much, much worse.

For our home-based family child care providers, they're trying to navigate the bureaucracy.

It's easier when they partner with a larger, not that we're better, but a larger with a lot more experience at navigating

the bureaucracy and those resources to do that.

So I think that that's a problem that's solvable.

That's a bureaucracy problem.

Honestly, we've seen a dramatic improvement for us.

We were not part of the first round of 2K because it just wasn't in the neighborhoods that we were in yet, but we ready.

You know, other than that, we've seen a dramatic improvement, honestly, with this administration and this version of the city council and payment and procurement process.

It ain't perfect for everybody, but it's been a nightmare in the past two administrations at different times for us.

So there is a focus on that that proves that this is a solvable problem that finally has the political will to do that.

But from our perspective.

Anything to streamline the bureaucracy, to let us get these children in their seats.

Parents are desperate to get their kids in.

We have space, we have capacity, and we still have other issues we have to address, like the workforce pipeline.

But that's my plea from the community-based perspective.