High school sophomore Samira Barotova may be well past preschool age, but she is deeply aware of the city’s ongoing child care crisis.
When her younger brother couldn’t secure a spot in the city’s free 3-K program, Samira’s mother asked her to skip afternoon volleyball practice to help take care of him. Volleyball, a passion for Samira, took a back seat to her brother’s needs. Still, watching over him left her feeling a sense of “emptiness” in her heart.
It wasn’t until Samira did some research and helped her mom obtain a voucher to subsidize child care for low-income families that she could return to her extracurricular activities.
This experience motivated Samira to speak out, alongside dozens of her classmates and members of the People’s Plan, a progressive coalition advocating for more investments in social services. On Thursday, they rallied outside the Education Department’s headquarters in downtown Manhattan, calling for increased funding for early childhood education, immigrant student support, arts education, mental health services, and the City University of New York (CUNY).
The rally was the result of a project in the 10th-grade English classes at Leaders High School in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. Leaders is part of a group of schools in the city that prioritize student-driven projects and are mostly exempt from Regents exams. Students researched the city’s budget and focused on the areas that most directly affected their lives. Several of their proposed budget changes align with recommendations from the People’s Plan.
The city’s budget is due by the end of June, and recently, the City Council urged Mayor Eric Adams to allocate an additional $800 million for education programs missing from his preliminary budget. The state budget, which is over a week late, will also have significant effects on the city’s schools, including the fate of the child care voucher program.
Child Care Crisis Forces Older Siblings to Step In
Samira wasn’t alone in noticing how a lack of child care forces older siblings to take on additional responsibilities. Malk Elgamal, another student at Leaders, reflected on her childhood when she stayed home with her mom until her older siblings returned from school, allowing her mom to work.
“I didn’t understand it then, but my siblings had to rush home from school,” she said. “If I had a place to go, my sister could have gone out with her friends, and my brother could have played sports.”
Malk and Samira both joined the growing calls from lawmakers and advocates for Mayor Adams to restore funding for early childhood education programs left out of the preliminary budget.
Students Push for More Support for Immigrants
The impact of former President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigrants is a pressing issue for many students at Leaders High School, where students come from countries such as Uzbekistan, China, and Russia.
Rida Noor, an 11th grader who moved to the U.S. with her family from Pakistan eight months ago, emphasized the importance of access to legal services. She urged the city to invest an additional $59 million to fund legal support for immigrant families, a key proposal in the People’s Plan.
“Everything felt overwhelming,” she recalled. “We didn’t understand the laws, what documents we needed, or the rules we had to follow. I remember my parents whispering late at night, ‘What if a small mistake means we can’t stay?’”
Merely Salamanca, another Leaders student and the daughter of Mexican immigrants, shared her experience of learning in 2022 that her father would not be allowed to return to the U.S. after a trip to Mexico.
“I dropped the phone. My heart sank. I couldn’t even breathe. The world stopped in that moment,” she said.
Merely noted that many families have gone through similar struggles. She criticized Mayor Adams for “cooperating with Trump’s administration” and called on the city to invest more in protecting immigrant New Yorkers in next year’s budget.
