Santosuosso asks about DOH permitting and agency coordination

Okay, I guess when we're talking about additional staff, and I don't know if you share this perspective, but it does feel like some of the payments and the permitting get held up in agencies that are not DOE, for instance, within DOH.

And so I'm wondering if there's a plan moving forward to not only boost the capacity of DOE in order to do these payments and to administer these contracts effectively, but also in the organizations that are part of the permitting process.

EOH specifically.

Yes.

So a big part of the function of my office, the Mayor's Office of Child Care, is to make sure that we are coordinating across all of the different agencies that touch child care so that we can ensure a more seamless experience for providers.

So a big part of our focus this year has been on just enhancing that coordination, making processes easier for providers, including with the launch of our permitting portal earlier this year, which we had the chance to demo for the subcommittee.

We did assess staffing needs at the Department of Health and made sure they had sufficient capacity to inspect sites, to complete background checks for staff.

We had a relatively small number of programs coming into 2K that had new permits this year, just because given the short timeline, we primarily focused on bringing in providers who were already permitted to serve two-year-olds.

As we expand further, we do anticipate...

Bringing programs in that are opening for the first time or doing some sort of permanent amendment to add 2K capacity.

And so we will be closely monitoring the Department of Health's capacity as well as our other agency partners.

Yeah, I only say it because I had two, they weren't 2K programs, obviously, they were preschools, but I had two preschools that were completely held up by DOH with

re-permitting, re-inspection issues that ultimately they couldn't get their payments because they weren't cleared from DOH.

And I felt the DOE was doing what they could have, but DOH was really lagging behind.

And as we talk about an expansion, I just feel like that

is probably going to happen over and over again if it's not.

Yes, and I think for us it is both a matter of ensuring the agencies have sufficient capacity and ensuring that the agencies are properly coordinating,

which is work that we have been doing over the past couple months and will start even earlier next year ahead of the launch of school, given that we will have many new seats coming online.

Understood.

Thank you both.

Thanks for your work.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Next, we have Councilmember Joseph, followed by Councilmember Felder.