‘$36,000 a year?’ Is Mamdani forcing NYC parents to pay sky-high private preschool fees?

As Mayor Zohran Mamdani moves ahead with one of the central promises of his administration, expanding free, universal childcare, parts of New York’s private preschool system are becoming more expensive, with providers raising fees and parents facing higher costs outside the new programme.

The changes come alongside a state-backed rollout led with Governor Kathy Hochul, which aims to widen access to childcare but is also intensifying competition for staff and resources across the sector.

Parents push back as fees jump by 20%

Manhattan Schoolhouse, a private daycare chain on the Upper East Side serving children from three months to five years old and contracted to run pre-K and 3-K through the city Department of Education, reportedly raised tuition for its full-day programme to nearly $4,000 a month.

According to a New York Post report, families were informed earlier this year that tuition for the school’s full-day programme would rise to nearly $4,000 a month for the 8am to 6pm schedule, marking about a 20% increase from the previous year.

The decision prompted a backlash, with nearly 100 families signing a petition opposing the hike. One parent described the increase as “the equivalent of a $16,000 pre-tax raise for a working paren, an impossible amount for most families to absorb in a single year.”

Another parent said, “Day care is not a luxury, this is not like renting a yacht… Bottom line, they’re f—ing over the Upper East Side,” adding that limited options in the neighbourhood leave families with little room to move.

School officials later issued a revised pricing structure, reducing fees by around $100 per month for certain families, but parents said the change did little to ease the burden. Several also noted that the update came too late in the admissions cycle to consider switching to another provider.

Providers point to costs and competition

Manhattan Schoolhouse leadership said the increase reflects a mix of rising operating expenses and structural pressure from the city’s expanding childcare programmes.

Chief executive Kamila Faruki said competition for staff has intensified as more educators move into better-paid roles within the public system.

“The teachers who are working for DOE, their salaries are much higher, so we are competing with them,” she said in an interview with the New York Post. “Because of the way it’s structured, we lose a lot of good teachers … there’s so many programs that closed because they couldn’t keep up with this.”

She added that higher wages inevitably translate into higher fees. “What it does [mean] is we will have to increase the salaries of our teachers … the cost has to go somewhere,” she said.

Faruki also pointed to rising operating expenses, including higher insurance premiums and a roughly 20% increase in food prices over the past year. “All these costs were going up double-digits, and we were really trying to keep as minimal a cost increase as possible,” she said, adding that Manhattan Schoolhouse had priced itself 30–35% below competitors. “Last year is where we said ‘this has become unsustainable,’” she added, “and we have to really change.”

Free childcare rollout forms the backdrop

The tuition increase comes as the city expands its publicly funded childcare system. Mamdani and Hochul have launched a 2-K pilot programme, part of a broader initiative known as 2-Care, that will offer free, full-day, full-year care for two-year-olds, starting with around 2,000 seats in selected districts including Washington Heights, Rockaway, Fordham and Canarsie.

Backed by an initial state commitment of roughly $500 million, the programme will be funded entirely through state revenues, with costs expected to reach about $425 million annually by 2027 as it scales to 12,000 seats across the city. Officials say the expansion marks the first major push to broaden universal childcare in New York since 2018 and forms part of a wider plan to provide care for children aged six weeks to five years.

City officials have acknowledged that the pilot will cost about $36,500 per child, significantly higher than the average amount families currently pay for private childcare.

Hochul said, “There’s one thing that every family in New York can agree on, the cost of childcare is simply too high,” while Mamdani described the initiative as part of a broader effort to make the city more affordable for working families.

An already expensive system

Childcare costs in New York City were already among the highest in the country before the latest increases.

A city comptroller’s 2024 report found that families pay around $23,400 a year on average for centre-based toddler care, while overall costs for infants and toddlers average about $26,000 annually. Family-based care is somewhat lower at around $18,200, but both categories have risen sharply since 2019, increasing by 43% and 79% respectively. In comparison, NYC-area inflation over the same period was about 20%, while average hourly earnings grew by just 13%.

The same report estimated that a household would need to earn roughly $334,000 a year to comfortably afford care for a two-year-old in the city.

For many families, the rising costs are leaving limited options. One parent said annual childcare expenses of $30,000 to $40,000 are “devastating to families,” while another, Danielle Avissar, an Upper East Side mom with one child currently in Manhattan Schoolhouse’s universal child care program under the DOE said she already spends more than $30,000 a year on after-school care for her two kids, and is expected to pay $300 more starting next school year.

“The reality is that, if you’re a working parent and you have a career, you’re going to have to pay [more], or you’re going to have to find a caretaker,” she said.