NYC pre-K system to be restructured in $112 billion budget deal

New York City will restore some funding to its prekindergarten program, adding 3-K and special education seats, as part of a $112.4 billion budget agreement between Mayor Eric Adams and the City Council announced on Friday.

The move seeks to restructure a signature education initiative that was once a national model but which many say has fallen into disorganization under Adams.

The budget deal adds $100 million in spending on early education, a portion of which will go toward ensuring pre-K seats for 1,600 families who are currently on a waitlist. It doesn’t fully reverse all of the mayor’s cuts, which he justified by pointing to vacant seats in the program. Instead, the budget will aim to attract more parents by converting half-day programs to full-day and year-round pre-K options.

“No longer can we simply budget for seats and let thousands sit empty when families remain on waitlists or are placed in areas that cause them to disregard the system altogether,” Council Speaker Adrienne Adams said at City Hall on Friday.

The speaker and mayor announced the budget agreement at a joint press conference, with the speaker beginning her remarks by describing the budget talks as “a most difficult process and negotiation.”

This year, the Council and advocates pressured Mayor Adams to reverse cuts to popular programs that he blamed on the migrant crisis. Fiscal experts and the Council called the mayor’s cost estimates inflated and his cuts excessive.

In the end, the mayor largely relented, putting back money towards librariescultural institutions and parks.

Although he has increasingly clashed with the Council over the budget and other policy issues, the mayor downplayed those tensions at the press conference. He arrived holding a toy airplane, a reference to his insistence that despite their disagreements on spending he and the speaker would “land the plane.”

“This body of people in public service have done something that no one thought we can do,” Mayor Adams said. “Like it or not, we have been successful.”

The negotiations over pre-K were especially protracted, centering on a program that Speaker Adams and policy experts view as a lifeline for many working parents. Recent data has shown an exodus of young families from the city due in part to the high cost of child care.

“Child care is very expensive, and having programs run by the city, such as 3-K, could be a very big benefit for families,” said George Sweeting, a fiscal policy expert at the New School’s Center for New York City Affairs.

Facing a backlash from parents, Mayor Adams in April restored more than $500 million in education funding as part of a series of walk backs.

But he also criticized former Mayor Bill de Blasio for directing a stream of federal pandemic aid, which has now expired, toward expanding the 3-K program. The city struggled to allocate seats properly, with thousands of empty slots in some neighborhoods and not enough in others. In what became an education debacle for Adams, around 2,500 families this spring did not receive a pre-K offer.

The new budget for early childhood services will also include funding for special education pre-K seats and a program that helps undocumented families with child care, which advocates have said is a common challenge within the community.

Rita Joseph, who chairs the Council’s education committee, said the budget would set aside $5 million toward marketing the city’s pre-K program.

Instead of merely relying on advertising, she said the city would devote “boots on the ground” to get the word out to families in churches, hair salons and homeless shelters.

“Any kind of place that has not been touched,” she said.

Immediately after the event with the speaker, the mayor was set to appear at a rally outside City Hall to celebrate the budget, billed as a win for working-class New Yorkers.

The spending plan will include the largest expansion to date for Fair Fares, a program that provides half-priced MetroCards to low-income New Yorkers. Around 336,000 people are currently enrolled in the program. The city is increasing the eligibility from 120% below the federal poverty level to 145%.

Danny Pearlstein, policy and communications director for the nonprofit Riders Alliance, which advocates for MTA riders, said the change would make an estimated 250,000 more New Yorkers eligible for Fair Fares.

But in a sign of who will win credit for the budget, Pearlstein reserved his praise for only one of the bargaining partners.

“We’ll keep working to reach 200% of the federal poverty line, and we’re thrilled to have Speaker Adams and the Council in our corner,” he said in a statement.

Stephen Nessen contributed reporting.

This story has been updated with a comment from councilmember Rita Joseph.