New York City Mayor Mamdani on Thursday announced the opening of an Upper East Side preschool that was completed last summer, but failed to open this school year — despite parents clamoring for free child care in the tony neighborhood.
The pre-K and 3-K center in a former parking garage on 65th St. between York and First Aves. will offer 72 seats for 4-year-olds and 60 seats for 3-year-olds, officials said. The center will open this September.
The news conference comes as Mamdani looks to address a glaring irony in the city’s early childhood system: While there are thousands of free preschool slots available, those programs can be located far away from students’ homes. As one of his first major announcements as mayor, Mamdani secured $100 million from Gov. Hochul to open more 3-K programs in neighborhoods that have long waitlists.
“For too long, parents across the city have faced a shortage of 3-K and pre-K seats in their neighborhood,” Mamdani said at the preschool, flanked by Council Speaker Julie Menin and Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal. “The lack of early childhood education centers left families with two bad choices: Either claim a seat in a neighborhood far away, or pay out of pocket for child care.”
“While this building was completed last summer, its classrooms have continued to sit empty for months,” he continued. “And so, while parents were forced to look elsewhere for child care, they would walk past a solution to the very challenges that they faced, wondering why its doors remained closed. Today, we are righting that wrong.”
As of the end of last year, more than 42,400 students had enrolled in 3-K, according to city education data. That left close to 9,600 vacant seats for 3-year-olds — for a utilization rate of 82% citywide.
But while classrooms are under-enrolled in some pockets of the city, other neighborhoods, including the Upper East Side, are home to more young children than there are accessible seats, leading to an application cycle plagued by uncertainty and stress as parents wait and see if they will be assigned a program that works for them.
“I had a family member pull me aside with a young child, and say, ‘Can you please stop advertising about 3-K and pre-K? Because I want to make sure that we all actually get a seat,’” Mamdani said. “And that’s how so many New Yorkers have been engaging with this process, worried about whether they will have a city that can meet the demand.”
On the flip side, the mayor’s administration is working to fill empty seats in neighborhoods where the demand for 3-K is lower.
“We have families all over the city, especially lower-income families, who don’t always know that 3-K is available to them,” Emily Liss, Mamdani’s top child care official, said in a recent interview with the Daily News. “Families who may not be as well-connected to government services and information, families who don’t speak English, families who may have other reasons to be fearful or distrustful of government — especially right now.”
“Part of fulfilling the promise of 3-K also means getting out and trying to reach these families directly to make sure they know that there is a 3-K seat for them,” said Liss, executive director of the Mayor’s Office of Child Care and Early Childhood Education.
As of late January, the application pool’s size under Mamdani was similar to last year’s under former Mayor Adams, who Mamdani has criticized for poor outreach efforts. Asked for an update at Thursday’s news conference, Mamdani said that trend has continued, despite his preschool registration blitz.
“We are currently in line with prior years,” Mamdani said. “We are also anticipating that, as is typically the case, the closer we get to the deadline, the more families will take that final step. And we are looking to use every single tool at our disposal to reach out to families.”
Menin, speaking at the Upper East Side preschool, said the City Council is planning a “day of action” on Monday with members throughout the city “to spread the word to make sure that families are signing up.”
“This is really a sign of what we need to do citywide — to open up more child care facilities to make sure that every single parent that wants a slot in pre-K and 3-K has it,” Menin said.
3-K and pre-K applications are due by Feb. 27.
