A $30,000 question: Who gets a free kindergarten spot in New York City?
In Brooklyn Heights, a couple who wanted a second child are reconsidering concerns about crushing child care expenses and cuts to preschool programs.
In Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, a mother can move to a more expensive neighborhood nearby where she is more likely to get free child care when her daughter turns three.
And in Manhattan’s Stuyvesant Town, a mother who has lost her job worries about what the future will hold if her daughter doesn’t get a free program.
Their stories are signs of the new turmoil facing New York City families now that Mayor Eric Adams has abandoned plans to make the city’s 3K program universal. The decline comes as New Yorkers face an intensifying child care crisis that has contributed to a sharp increase in poverty.
For nearly a decade, every four-year-old in New York qualified for a free seat in kindergarten — and three-year-olds would be next in line. The unusual program was intended to make living in an increasingly unaffordable city more affordable for thousands of families, whose continued presence would also benefit the city’s economy.
But instead of expanding the 3-K program, the Adams administration has cut the city’s preschool budget by about $170 million in recent months because of empty seats.
When registrations for the coming school year opened in January, the Website of the Education Department informed parents that only half of the city’s 32 local school districts would have seats available for all three-year-olds. In the other half, places would be allocated to ‘as many families as possible’.
The disruption has sparked a high-stakes battle to win a coveted seat, and has caused deep anxiety among many lower-income and middle-class families.
Mayor Adams has said improving access to affordable child care is a top priority, and last year created a new office to oversee the early childhood strategy. But the executive director quietly left in October after eight months in the role, and a permanent replacement has not yet been named, raising questions about the status of those efforts.
For parents navigating the increasingly uncertain process, what was once a time of relief has become a frenzy of confusion.
Megan Moskop-Toler, whose family in Brooklyn spends more on child care than on rent, said the idea of leaving New York had become “more appealing.”
“Having 3-K and 4-K as an option is really huge for us,” Ms. Moskop-Toler said. She applies for free kindergarten for her son, but also has a newborn daughter. “Is that an option for her?”
Amaris Cockfield, a spokeswoman for the mayor, said the city is investing billions in early childhood care and relocating “thousands of seats” to “immediately meet demand and expand access for families.”
“We are committed to ensuring that every child who needs a seat has one in a nearby neighborhood,” she said in a statement.
After an inquiry from a New York Times reporter, the department updated the 3-K website a week early the application deadline is March 1 — to eliminate the division of districts and the availability of seats. In interviews with more than a dozen parents, almost all said they had already used it to make their plans.
An uncertain landscape
In a city where many families spend more than $30,000 a year on child care for one toddler, Mayor Bill de Blasio’s creation of a comprehensive free preschool network became a favored right.
Especially large numbers of mothers leave their career because they don’t have access to affordable childcare, and New York’s programs allow more of them to stay in the US labor power.
Today, kindergarten for 4-year-olds remains universal. But the future of the 3-K program is in flux. The Adams administration has not presented a plan to fund it after more than $90 million in federal pandemic aid expires this fall, and the administration’s management of early childhood programs has become a lightning rod for criticism.
“It’s a slap in the face for women and for gender equality,” said Rebecca Bailin, who leads the newly formed New Yorkers United for Child Care, a group that advocates for universal programs.
Ms. Bailin said she recently met a couple in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, who enrolled their three-year-old child in a private program because they didn’t know free options were available.
“Even the most educated and wealthiest people in our community struggle to know what’s going on,” she said.
Administration officials have often said they inherited a flawed operation, pointing to the large number of unused seats in certain neighborhoods. “We saw a system that was completely misaligned,” Mayor Adams said in a recent radio interview.
“Our goal is to ensure that every child who wants a seat gets a seat,” he added. Yet it remains unclear whether all those children will receive them.
The city paid a consulting firm about $760,000 last year to identify preschool needs, and the company said it expected an increase from previous years in both 3-K applications and enrollment. It projected demand for up to 59,400 seats this fall. But only about 53,000 seats will be available, the city said.
As the application period draws to a close, families are eagerly awaiting the release of the offers, which are expected in the spring.
In busy neighborhoods like Manhattan’s Upper West Side, parents struggle to make plans as huge childcare bills loom. In areas like Prospect Lefferts Gardens in Brooklyn, where 3K programs are scarce, others are already preparing for the fact that they will not receive a suitable offer.
And many who expected to depend on free preschool can now imagine life without it. “It has become critically important,” said Emily Johnson, a single mother who lives in Stuyvesant Town on the east side of Manhattan and was recently laid off.
Mrs Johnson said she used all her savings to pay for her daughter’s care. But she lives in a competitive neighborhood and her current daycare center has not been approved to join the network of free childcare providers.
“I try not to get discouraged,” she said. “It would be life-changing.”
Shelley Cheung Claudon, a single mother in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, said she wonders how parents with less time and resources will navigate the kindergarten application process. “It’s just a very opaque system,” she said.
It was a celebrity parent who helped Gina Lee, a mother in central Brooklyn, secure a 3-K seat this year. Her daughter did not receive an offer when she applied and was behind dozens of other children on waiting lists.
But the other parent encouraged Ms. Lee to contact one of the programs she had signed up for immediately after classes started.
She tried out the school one Friday afternoon and received unexpected news: her daughter had a spot, but she would have to start on Monday. “If I hadn’t called,” Ms. Lee said, “I would have continued to pay $3,500 a month for private school.”
‘A real turning point’
The uncertainty comes as parents grapple with a broader problem: More than 80 percent of families in New York City cannot afford full-time childcare.
On Tuesday, the 5Boro Institute, a new think tank founded by allies of the mayor, became the latest influential voice calling for change.
In a far-reaching reportThe group says the city must take “immediate action” to save the system from collapse, including by filling the system on a large scale staff vacanciesincreasing assistance to vulnerable families and increasing wages for workers.
The city has also left hundreds of millions of dollars in public child care funding on the table, the city said.
“The industry as a whole is really in crisis,” said Grace Rauh, the group’s executive director. “We are at a real turning point.”
Ms. Cockfield, the mayor’s spokeswoman, pointed to the government’s creation of a new website for applying for childcare assistance, which she said has helped 30,000 families, as well as efforts to clear a waiting list for vouchers and to register more children.
The 5Boro Institute report acknowledged these steps, calling them “important,” but added that “we need to do more now.”
Some experts worry that rolling back preschool could set off a chain reaction: If more parents can’t get affordable care and choose to leave New York, the public school enrollment pipeline could shrink, leading to further budget cuts. programs would lead.
Families with children under six are already twice as likely to leave the city, according to the Fiscal Policy Institute, a nonpartisan research group.
Sara Lord, a new parent in Harlem, said she felt unsure whether her family could support a life in the city.
Her salary went entirely to her daughter’s childcare – and then she lost her job.
She is relieved to live in a neighborhood where all children are expected to get 3K spots. But she remains disappointed that “there really is still no solution from birth to 3 years.”
“It feels very much like the city wasn’t built for families,” she said.
Emma G. Fitzsimmons reporting contributed.