NYC boosting early-education apprentice programs as it expands childcare

Cayla Bamberger, New York Daily News on Oct 2, 2026

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NEW YORK — As Mayor Zohran Mamdani expands New York City’s free childcare programs, he will need to significantly grow its workforce.

On Friday morning, the city’s Office of Talent and Workforce Development, or NYC Talent for short, will announce a key component of its strategy to do so: The expansions of two apprenticeship programs — at the City University of New York and a special education school — to recruit and train early childhood teachers.

It’s a daunting task.

The childcare sector continues to face serious challenges after the COVID-19 pandemic, driven by low wages and high turnover. Early educators earn much less than public school teachers, making it hard to retain qualified staff. During the pandemic, providers left the industry in droves for jobs in retail and other fields with the opportunity for more pay — and less burnout.

Through NYC Talent, the administration is investing more than $1.2 million in early childhood apprenticeships, including $667,000 in new funding, officials will announce Friday at CUNY’s Hostos Community College in the Bronx.

Doug Lipari, executive director of NYC Talent, believes that apprenticeships, which offer paid, on-the-job learning and credentialing, are a win-win.

“It will be good for workers, and it’s good for businesses,” Lipari said. “Businesses get a sustainable pipeline of workers that are customized to their business. It’s investing both in their current workforce and their future workforce.”

“For workers,” he added, “apprenticeships generally are great because of that model where you’re not just learning and not just working — but you’re doing both at the same time.”

More than half of the new money will go toward the CUNY Professional Development Institute to add 30 apprentices, doubling the total enrollment to 60 trainees, according to a press release shared with the Daily News ahead of the announcement.

The remainder is for the Kennedy Children’s Center, serving the city’s youngest students with disabilities in the Bronx and East Harlem. The new funding will allow the school to add 16 apprentices, for a total of 51 trainees.

Elena Elfe, a graduate of the Kennedy Children’s Center’s apprenticeship program, quipped that she first became an early educator when her autistic daughter, then a student at one of the organization’s preschools in the Bronx, pivoted to remote learning during the pandemic.

She fell in love with the preschool anyway. She watched her daughter, whose doctors were not sure if she was going to talk, learn how to speak full sentences. Elfe quit her job in luxury retail and enrolled in a teacher assistant certification program at the center in 2022, before continuing her education in its apprenticeship program. She now serves as one of the mentors for pre-apprentices.

“It was a foot in,” Elfe said of the apprenticeship program. “I’ve been able to work with so many different families, and they come in the way I came in: ‘I don’t know if my kid’s going to walk.’ ‘I don’t know if my kids going to talk.’ And I’m like, ‘Don’t underestimate them.'”

The city’s childcare sector has roughly 40,000 workers, who are predominantly women of color. They earn less than 96% of all other jobs across the five boroughs, often living below the poverty line, according to a December report by the Day Care Council of New York.

In a survey of local childcare programs, 52% reported that their new teachers leave within five years. The report was authored by Emmy Liss, who has since joined the Mamdani administration as his “childcare czar.”

“We know that there is no universal childcare without the childcare workforce, and that as we expand access to care, we have to meaningfully expand the universe of who works in childcare,” Liss said during an interview Thursday. “This apprenticeship program is one of many strategies that we will take to bring new folks into the sector.”

“It’s one thing to read a book about 3- and 4-year-olds, and how their brains develop. It’s an entirely different thing to be in a classroom learning with and from 3- and 4-year-olds,” said Liss, who added that apprenticeships receive mentorship by working alongside experienced teachers. “It’s true on-the-job training.”

Beyond apprenticeships, the mayor’s childcare office is weighing opportunities for assistant teachers to become lead teachers, and partnerships with CUNY and other higher education institutions on more traditional models.

“There’s much more that we intend to do beyond this,” Liss said of the plans to come.

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