Picture: CUNY Baby Improvement Facilities
After I started my profession at CUNY in 2003 as a newly employed assistant professor at Queens School, I used to be relieved to study that the school provided low value youngster care on campus for college students, employees and college. I used to be new to the world and making an attempt to seek out youngster care for my toddler was daunting.
The Baby Improvement Middle allowed me to pursue my skilled aspirations whereas my daughter was close by and beginning her educational journey. Twenty-three years later, I work in CUNY’s Central Workplace because the College’s govt vice chancellor and provost — and my daughter is a Queens School graduate.
Neither of us would have reached this level as simply with out CUNY’s assist, and I stay deeply grateful to the middle’s devoted employees who made it potential for each my daughter and me to thrive. No mum or dad ought to must sacrifice their academic or profession ambitions as a result of they can not discover reasonably priced, high quality youngster care.
The College operates 17 campus-based youngster care facilities throughout the 5 boroughs, with plans for an 18th at Queensborough Neighborhood School. Collectively, they supply high quality care and preschool schooling that meet the wants of student-parents and their youngsters.
These companies, together with CUNY’s broader dedication to early childhood schooling, underpin the College’s position because the nation’s foremost engine of financial alternative. Our youngster care facilities assist 1000’s of student-parents full their levels, whereas our educational applications put together the subsequent era of lecturers and youngster care professionals — addressing a essential workforce want in New York.
That work was on show earlier this month when Chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez visited an early childhood improvement class at Borough of Manhattan Neighborhood School. The class qualifies for Governor Hochul’s initiative, CUNY Reconnect, to supply free group school for adults coming into high-demand fields.
And the college students are making ready for careers which are urgently wanted as Governor Hochul and Mayor Mamdani advance their purpose of common youngster care for 2-year-olds. CUNY is stepping up, increasing its early childhood schooling pipeline to assist meet the state’s wants. 13 CUNY schools now enroll greater than 3,600 college students throughout some 50 early childhood applications at each diploma stage.
The College additionally operates the New York Early Childhood Skilled Improvement Institute, which helps aspiring educators via 10 career-development facilities statewide. In partnership with New York Metropolis’s Workforce Improvement Company, the institute not too long ago launched the NYC Early Childhood Apprenticeship Program, putting aspiring youngster care staff in paid roles whereas they earn a tuition-free Baby Improvement Affiliate certificates from the CUNY College of Skilled Research.
The Chancellor’s go to to BMCC jogged my memory of a day years in the past when the Queens School president learn to my daughter and her classmates within the school library. Her connection to Queens School ran so deep that she selected to enroll there, incomes her bachelor’s diploma in 2022.
Watching my daughter cross the stage at commencement — simply toes from the playground the place she as soon as performed — was a robust reminder of the enduring assist CUNY supplies to generations of New York college students and their households, together with a College provost who wouldn’t be the place she is as we speak with out CUNY’s early childhood initiatives.
Alicia M. Alvero was appointed as govt vice chancellor and College provost of CUNY in February 2026, turning into the primary Latina to function the College’s chief educational officer. She started her 23-year profession at CUNY on the college at Queens School and has served in quite a lot of management roles.
