NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani takes listener questions

**Brian Lehrer** (0:05)
From WNYC, I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my Daily Politics Podcast. It's Tuesday, June 2nd.
And now, Season 1, Episode 1 of Ask the Mayor for the Mamdani Administration. My questions and yours for mayors around Mamdani. And good morning, Mr. Mayor. Thanks for doing this, and welcome back to WNYC.

**Zohran Mamdani** (0:28)
Good morning, Brian. It's such a pleasure to be back on. How are you?

**Brian Lehrer** (0:31)
I'm doing okay. Thank you very much. And I see you just finished an event launching the first part of your number one campaign promise, Free Universal Child Care. Applications are now open as of today, I see, for two-year-olds in five selected school districts, 2,000 available slots in Upper Manhattan and parts of the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens. How did you pick which neighborhoods to launch in?

**Zohran Mamdani** (0:55)
You know, we started this as the first step of what is a vision that will deliver free childcare for every two-year-old by the end of four years, and we wanted to start with the neighborhoods that have often been left behind in our politics, the neighborhoods where we see the highest need, the highest demand, and also the quickest ability to scale up, because as Senator Warren often says, childcare is infrastructure, and we need to be able to deliver this on a timeline of this fall, it'll be 2,000 seats, next year will be 12,000 seats, and then, as I said, by the end of year four, a seat for every single two-year-old.

**Brian Lehrer** (1:30)
And what would it take to accomplish that? More tax changes or how do you get all the way there?

**Zohran Mamdani** (1:37)
You know, we've seen part of that path through just these last few months, where we partnered with the governor to secure $1.2 billion to not only fix the issues that we had seen with 3K, but also to create for the first time in New York City history, 2K for free for New Yorkers. That funds it for not only this year, but also the expansion of 12,000 seats next year. And then we would continue this work to expand it all the way to every child. That's something that I'm incredibly excited to do with the governor. She's spoken time and time again of her commitment to the cause of universal childcare. And I share that same commitment. And I would say that to New Yorkers who are excited to sink their teeth into this program, the best thing that they can do right now is to go to myschools.nyc, which is where they can actually apply for a seat in this program.

**Brian Lehrer** (2:26)
Myschools.nyc, good for everybody with very little kids to know that. I mentioned that we invited potential questions for you in our Brian Lehrer Show newsletter last week. Here's one that came in through that relevant to the 2K program. It says with the expansion of universal childcare, what ways will you ensure the workforce is compensated as they should be? As it currently stands, early childhood workers and community-based organizations are grossly underpaid, compared to their counterparts in public schools. What do you say to that, listener?

**Zohran Mamdani** (3:00)
First, I want to just say thank you for that question and for that focus, because the only reason that we're able to dream of universal childcare is because of the work of early childhood educators across the city.
We've been having a number of conversations, a number of them have been headed by the executive director of our childcare office, as well as a few that I've sat in on myself. In those, I've heard from a number of these community-based organizations of the struggles that they've been facing and keeping up with rising costs. As we expand access to a high-quality program, we're also incredibly proud that in our executive budget, we invested 40 million additional dollars to ensure that the rates that childcare providers are being paid, better reflected the costs they're having to take on. This is just a first step in what will be a long-term commitment to ensuring that no parent is being priced out of New York City for having to raise their child here, and that no childcare provider is going to be priced out because they simply can't make ends meet.

**Brian Lehrer** (4:00)
Before we turn to things other than childcare, I do want people to know about a summer program that you announced for older kids. This is so important for families who can't afford private summer camp. Want to tell us briefly about that?

**Zohran Mamdani** (4:14)
Absolutely. First, I have to say, Brian, that growing up in New York City, one of my favorite websites to go to was a website called nyc.go.