Julissy Acosta was getting ready to send her children back to school when the call came. Her toddler’s day care classroom at Beanstalk Academy in Brownsville, Brooklyn, was closed until further notice. His teacher, she was told, didn’t want to commute from Staten Island anymore and had resigned. That left Acosta, 38, who pays for child care with vouchers, without many options. Working as a doula, she plans her hours around when family can help watch her son Simon, who’s 2. It’s not a long-term solution: Recently, she scheduled a visit for a day her sister was called into jury duty. “I had to take my toddler to the visit, and he freaked out,” she said. “I needed the money. I couldn’t say I’m not doing it today.” As New York City faces an intensifying affordability crisis, issues with child care are so pervasive that half of working moms reported disruptions over the last year, according to a new study by Robin Hood and Columbia University shared with the Daily News ahead of its release Monday. Upheaval in their work lives ranged from losing or changing positions, choosing part-time over full-time jobs and declining promotions, or not looking for work because of problems with reliable care for their children. Close to 3 in 10 mothers in the labor force made decisions not to look for a job due to child care issues. The consequences were enduring. A year later, mothers whose work was disrupted by child care issues were less likely to find steady work, researchers found. Their families were also 1.5 times more likely to be unable to pay for food, housing, bills, medical needs, or otherwise run out of money. Acosta has aspirations of going to law school, but those dreams are on hold for now. In the meantime, she’s felt the crunch during back-to-school season, estimating a total spend of $700 — including on uniform blazers with school logos that can cost up to $100. “I had to literally tell my children I will buy you a long sleeve this week, and a short sleeve next week. I’m so sorry, because Mommy is strapped,” she said. “Oh, Mommy, we need school supplies. They need me to get them an accordion folder, I’m like, I can’t do it this week.” The child care-related disruptions were more common among families with fewer resources. Moms in poverty were a staggering twice as likely to experience turnover at work — to quit, change or lose jobs — than families with higher incomes. “It perpetuates poverty,” said Loris Toribio, senior policy adviser in early childhood at Robin Hood. “They can’t just hire a baby-sitter if for some reason their home-based child care provider is not able to offer child care on a specific day. They don’t have that level of flexibility to just call someone or pay someone or make that decision because it’s expensive, and that impacts their long-term careers.” Problems with child care, Toribio added, have implications for an entire city. “The cost of care sometimes is higher than rent, which is unfathomable if you’re a renter in New York City,” she said. “Some families are actually just moving away. They can’t afford to live in New York anymore — and that’s something that policymakers should be taking very, very seriously. We cannot afford to have a state or a city that people cannot afford to set down roots in, to raise a child in, because that’s a threat to our future economic viability.” Hillary Dalton, 36, said she relies on the generosity of her landlord, who charges below-market rent for their Williamsburg apartment. Otherwise, she doesn’t know where her family would be able to live and afford child care. A member of New Yorkers United for Child Care, Dalton and her husband worked hard to nail down child care in their neighborhood, securing a spot months before the birth of their son, Roscoe, who’s now 8 months old. They picked it in part because it offers a public 3-K program when he’s older. Until free child care begins, it’s a delicate balance. Dalton has gone back to work as a scientist at a nonprofit, but only part-time. They make ends meet by sending Roscoe to day care — at a discounted rate of $2,000 per month — three days a week for abbreviated hours, when her husband, who works in education, can pick him up. To take the next step in her career would mean going back to the drawing board. “I’d have to make sure for any promotion I get, it would be enough to justify sending him to day care,” Dalton said. “It’s that issue of trying to balance — it would wreck our very sensitive but working plan that we have right now.”