Plan Would Reimagine City’s Early Childhood Education System With More Than $3 Billion Invested, Bolstered by $100 Million New Funding in FY25 Adopted Budget Joint Adams Administration-Council Effort Will Better Allocate Resources to Meet Needs, Connect Families with Unfilled Seats, Support Providers
New Investments Will Support Over 1,500 3-K Seats for Upcoming School Year in High-Need Communities, Expand Special Education and Extended Day Seats, Fund to Support Undocumented Children, Target Outreach Efforts to Boost Enrollment
Adams Administration Has Extended Offers to 100 Percent of Families Who Applied for 3-K On Time, History
Administration Has Made Child Care More Affordable by Dramatically Reducing Out-of-Pocket Cost of Subsidized Child Care by More Than 10-Fold
New York City Mayor Eric Adams and leadership of the New York City Council today announced a historic joint effort to strengthen early childhood education across the five boroughs and address longstanding systemic issues, while boosting enrollment and connecting families with more Pre-K and 3-K seats. The strategic plan — developed by an unprecedented joint Adams administration-Council working group, chaired by Deputy Mayor for Strategic Initiatives Ana J. Almanzar and Speaker Adams — will be anchored by $100 million in new city investment allocated in the Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 Adopted Budget to implement an action-oriented roadmap for outreach and seat allocation across the city. With the new $100 million investment, the total investment in the FY25 city budget for early childhood education is $3 billion, comprised of $2 billion for early childhood education programming for children aged zero to five and approximately $1 billion for preschool special education.
In the two months since the budget was announced and voted on, New York City Public Schools added more than 1,500 additional 3-K seats in high-demand areas of the city to support families for the 2024-2025 school year. Since May 2024, New York City Public Schools has continued to drive down waitlists — reaching 100 percent of families who applied before the application deadline with first-round offers by mid-August. The Adams administration's joint effort with the City Council will strengthen the city’s early childhood education system to better allocate resources and connect families with seats.
“All families deserve to live in a city with a safe, nurturing, and affordable place to leave their children, while being given the opportunity to pursue their dreams,” said Mayor Adams. “Access to affordable child care is one of the largest drivers of economic mobility, especially for women. That’s why our administration has delivered an expanded and more equitable early childhood education program, and, with this plan, we are presenting our vision for how to strengthen it even further into the future. Despite early childhood applications more than tripling from five years ago, there has been a 350 percent increase in families receiving offers. This year alone, 100 percent of families that applied on time have received an early childhood offer. But we know there is work to be done. That’s why we have invested $100 million in this historic plan with the City Council to fix lingering systemic problems and usher in a new and improved program. Our plan focuses on better allocating resources to meet needs, conducting robust family outreach, supporting providers, and expanding access for students with disabilities, as well as undocumented families. Every day, we will continue to build a city focused on supporting working-class people, that is safer, more prosperous, more affordable, and, most importantly, that invests in our children. I thank Speaker Adams and our partners on the Council for helping to deliver a better product for New York families.”
“Improving and investing in our city’s early childhood education system has always been this Council’s priority," said New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams. "Today’s announcement is the fruit of more than a year and half of labor to expand extended day options and special education seats, support this essential workforce, and make child care more accessible. I’m pleased that the Department of Education has cleared the 3-K waiting list with offers made to all families that applied. I look forward to working with the Adams administration to ensure more families access seats moving forward. While we celebrate this progress, we will continue the collaborative work to fix the inefficiencies in our early childhood education system to better serve families, particularly those in low-income areas that are currently under-enrolled.”
Despite inheriting major structural challenges, particularly associated with a mismatch in available seats to demand, the Adams administration has been committed to improving the city’s early childhood education system. Under the leadership of Mayor Adams, early childhood enrollment is at the highest level ever, with over 150,000 children across New York City’s early childhood system. This includes children in New York City Public Schools, as well as programs run by the New York City Administration for Children’s Services and the New York City Human Resources Administration, speaking to how the city is serving families in early childhood education across a range of agencies, programs, and services. For the first-time ever, 3-K has been made available in every school district with more families applying and getting seats than ever-before. is at the highest it has ever been, with over 53,000 available seats across the New York City Public Schools system— an increase of approximately 17 percent in 3-K capacity since the onset of the Adams administration.
Recently, the Adams administration announced the appointment of Simone C. Hawkins as New York City Public Schools’ new deputy chancellor of Early Childhood Education. To continue building on this success and accomplish a comprehensive re-imagining of the early childhood education system in New York City, the Adams administration and the City Council have created a 10-point plan that will be executed by New York City Public Schools, the Mayor’s Office of Child Care and Early Childhood Education and multiple city agencies, in partnership with the Council to:
- Increasing 3-K Access for Families This School Year
The Adams administration committed to ensuring all children who applied for 3-K for the 2024-2025 school year will have access to a high-quality early childhood education seat and has delivered on that commitment. To accomplish this goal, the city added $20 million in the FY25 Adopted Budget to immediately meet the needs of families. Within weeks, New York City Public Schools expanded 3-K capacity to more than 1,500 additional seats in the specific zip codes across several districts in which families did not receive an initial offer. With the passage of the adopted budget, 100 percent of families that initially didn’t receive a 3-K offer now have received one.
- Expanding Family Outreach Strategy
Lacking access to resources about the availability of early childhood education and how to apply is a major barrier to entry for many families. To directly address this access-gap, the Adams administration and the City Council have invested a total of $5 million for an outreach effort to maximize the number of children enrolled in 3-K and Pre-K. The effort conducts targeted outreach to communities with under-enrollment and bring resources directly to communities. Launched in July 2024, this comprehensive outreach plan will leverage partnerships with community partners and community-based organizations to facilitate direct engagement with families and provide hands-on enrollment support.
- Increasing Preschool Special Education Classrooms
The Adams administration will continue to increase preschool special education classrooms to ensure early childhood education across New York City is inclusive of all children. In 2022, the Adams administration announced a historic contract enhancement and committed to creating 800 preschool special education seats, which grew to over 900. New York City Public Schools increased teacher pay for this critical sector at a time when it was suffering due to underinvestment and difficulty hiring staff, which resulted in stabilizing over 6,500 seats.
This investment will be sustained and further expanded with a historic commitment of $122 million. This includes baselining $67 million for preschool contract enhancements for community-based organizations and the addition of $55 million in new city funds for New York City Public Schools to expand hundreds of preschool special education seats across district schools for the 2024-2025 school year. This fall, 450 additional special education seats will be available with the goal of reaching 700 throughout the school year.
- Providing Free Extended Hours of Early Childhood Education for Children and Their Families
Extended day offerings eliminate multiple barriers for parents to maintain employment or further their education while their child is in a safe, high-quality environment later into the evening. That is why the FY24 Adopted Budget baselined $15 million for New York City Public Schools to launch the first-ever pilot, providing funding to give over 1,700 families the opportunity to access free extended hours of 3-K and Pre-K in their own communities. The pilot includes communities with the highest economic need index and where there is limited or no extended day programming. Now, this effort will be propelled by $25 million more , bringing the total investment to $40 million and the opportunity to provide access to thousands of families.
- Expanding Support for Undocumented Children Through Promise NYC
The Adams administration and the City Council will continue to support undocumented children and their families who are not eligible for state- and federally-subsidized child care due to their immigration status by expanding Promise NYC, from $16 million in FY24 to $25 million in FY25. Launched in January 2023, the program contracts with four community-based organizations to help families across all five boroughs access and afford child care. Within three months of its launch, Promise NYC had surpassed its initial goal of enrolling 600 children. The additional funds will allow approximately 1,000 children to enroll in child care through Promise NYC.
- Funding the Mayor’s Office of Child Care and Early Childhood Education
The Adams administration will provide sustainable funding of approximately $485,000 for three additional staff members in the Mayor’s Office of Child Care and Early Childhood Education, which is charged with coordinating early childhood education efforts across the city and executing on this 10-point plan. Funding for this office was previously provided by philanthropic dollars.
- Providing Deeper Support for Child Care and Early Childhood Education Providers and Programs
The Mayor’s Office of Child Care and Early Childhood Education will ensure a holistic approach to child care and early childhood education policy in New York City through collaborative strategy and planning with city agencies. The Mayor’s Office of Child Care and Early Childhood Education will create formal mechanisms for cross-agency collaboration and accountability, and convene agencies to tackle emerging cross-agency issues and plan long-term strategies for the child care sector. Using feedback and input from child care and early childhood providers, the Mayor’s Office of Child Care and Early Childhood Education will work with city agencies to review, assess, and streamline city polices and processes to make it easier for child care providers to sustain their operations and thrive.
- Establishing the “Child Care Advisory Group”
Delivering on a key priority outlined in Mayor Adams’ “Accessible, Equitable, High-Quality, Affordable: A Blueprint for Child Care and Early Childhood Education in New York City,” the Mayor’s Office of Child Care and Early Childhood Education will establish the “Child Care Advisory Group,” comprised of providers, parents, key early childhood stakeholders, and city agencies that work in partnership with the administration to ultimately deliver accessible, high-quality child care across the city. The advisory group — which was established in July 2024 —works with the Adams administration to ensure alignment with provider and family priorities and needs, provide input on the design of new strategies, and support planning and implementation of key policies.
- Convening Bi-Weekly Meetings Between the Adams Administration and the City Council
To execute this plan and address long-standing challenges across the complex and dynamic early childhood education system, the Adams administration and City Council will hold bi-weekly meetings, chaired by Deputy Mayor Almanzar and Speaker Adams, that includes members of the City Council, participants from the Office of Management and Budget, New York City Public Schools, and the Office of the Chief of Staff to Mayor Adams. The outside of these meetings to coordinate efforts and information-sharing across city agencies.
- Ensuring City Agencies Have the Staff and Resources to Support the Infrastructure of the City’s Early Childhood Education System
The Adams administration and city agencies will work together to ensure adequate and sufficient staffing structures that are integral to the sustainability and growth of the city’s early childhood system. This includes staff and resources working on subsidy applications determinations, enrollment into vacant child care seats, background checks, health and safety, and training and technical assistance supports for early childhood programs.
“This joint effort with the City Council to prioritize working families with children reflects our ongoing prioritization of early childhood education,” said First Deputy Mayor Sheena Wright. “Since taking office, the Adams administration has prioritized making accessible and affordable child care available to any parent who needs it, boosting the number of children enrolled in child care to 150,000, and reducing the per child co-pay from an average of $55 per week to less than $5 per week. Today’s investment of over $100 million will enable the city to provide more accessible, affordable, and equitable early childhood education and focuses in particular on communities who were too often left underserved, including seats for special education and extended day services. We will continue every effort to make childcare accessible and affordable to every New Yorker.”
“Our administration is laser-focused on building a more livable city, where New Yorkers from all walks of life can afford to live and raise a family,” said Chief of Staff Camille Joseph Varlack. “That’s why we’re investing an additional $100 million in reimagining early childhood education. We’re making sure every family that wants a seat has access to one, ensuring our system works for New Yorkers with special needs and undocumented New Yorkers, expanding hours so parents who work late hours have a safe place for their kids to stay, and so much more.”
“Today’s announcement is a testament to the Adams’ administration’s commitment to ensuring New York City’s children and their families have equitable access to high-quality, affordable child care and early childhood education,” said Deputy Mayor for Strategic Initiatives Ana Almanzar. “With over $3 billion invested in the early childhood education system and $100 million in new funding, the Adams administration is building an early childhood education system centered on parent- and caregiver-choice, supports for providers, and delivering high-quality options for families. The 10-point plan expands the number of seats for preschool special education, adds more extended day services for working families, and enables undocumented children to get the care they need. I thank the City Council for their partnership and look forward to working together with our city agency partners to accomplish this vision.”
“We’re increasing support for families in need of child care and strengthening programs for children with special needs,” said Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services Anne Williams-Isom. “Furthermore, today’s announcement shows our commitment to parents, families, children, and young people with investments to help give children and young people a strong start, provide relief to parents, and help us achieve a brighter tomorrow. These are advancements that will help children and families today long into the future as we continue to deliver the foundational supports New Yorkers need to thrive.”
“By giving our children bright starts and a strong educational foundation, we ensure they are on track for bold futures,” said New York City Public Schools Chancellor David C. Banks. “I am thrilled to stand alongside Mayor Adams, Deputy Mayor Almanzar, and the City Council in enacting a new plan for early childhood education. Our children and families deserve this renewed commitment.”
Thanks to the Adams administration’s ongoing strong fiscal management — which was bolstered by better-than-expected revenue growth — the administration overcame unprecedented challenges in this budget cycle to stabilize the city’s financial outlook and close a $7.1 billion budget gap in January. Now, because of steady, decisive decision making, this adopted budget allows the Adams administration and the City Council to reinvest in initiatives and programs that make New York City more affordable and that address the three things that cost New Yorkers the most — housing, child care, and health care — and that invest billions of dollars of city resources in critical areas, including early childhood education, cultural organizations, parks, public safety, housing, health care, transit, and more. The city will also hold school budgets harmless and safeguard more than $600 million in educational programs previously funded with short-term stimulus.
A thriving early childhood education system is crucial to making New York City more affordable, particularly for women and families. The Adams administration’s child care blueprint found that almost 375,000 parents left or downshifted their jobs because of COVID-19 and lack of access to quality child care. For mothers, the decision to leave the workforce to care for a child can cost up to $145,000 in foregone earnings across their lifetime. That is why the Adams administration has prioritized developing an early childhood program that works for the long-term and has seen results in terms of access and affordability.
Under Mayor Adams’ leadership, the city has made significant investments and enacted policies to support working-class families and put money back into the pockets of working-class New Yorkers by reducing the per child co-payment or out-of-pocket cost of subsidized child care for a family earning $55,000 a year from $55 a week in 2022 to just $4.80 a week today — more than 10 times less. The city has also reduced the co-payments all families pay for subsidized care, bringing the average co-payment per child to less than $220 per year, down from $1,500 annually in 2022.
Despite handling record-high applications, the Adams administration is placing more children in child care than ever before. pandemic, the number of families applying for 3-K has more than tripled, going from approximately 14,000 applicants in 2019 to over 43,000 initial applicants in 2024 — more than three times as many — while, simultaneously, the number of families receiving offers has increased by 350 percent, going from 9,500 offers in 2019 to over 43,000 offers in 2024. Upon the first-round of offers this year, 94 percent of families first received an offer, compared to 82 percent in 2020, meaning there were initially 2,589 families that did not receive a 3-K offer this year, compared to nearly families who did not get a 3-K offer in 2019. Throughout the summer, New York City Public Schools worked with families so that more than 2,500 families received offers by mid-August. This marks the first-time 100 percent of applicants who applied on-time, received a 3-K offer in New York City history — and, the vast majority of families are getting the program of their preference. This admissions cycle, 71 percent of families received their top choice and 85 percent of families received one of their top three choices.
With more than 1,500 seats added since passage of the FY25 Adopted Budget, the city’s 3-K capacity is now over 53,000. Combined with dedicated outreach, these efforts are expected to boost enrollment and ensure efficiency, both operationally and fiscally.
Additionally, last year, Mayor Adams released MyCity, a one-stop-shop portal where parents can easily apply for and track their applications for subsidized child care. In the first year since launching, 65 percent of all applications for child care subsidies were received online through MyCity.
Finally, the administration has dramatically increased early childhood enrollment with over 150,000 children enrolled last year, stabilized the system by reducing the payment timeline to vendors from what was approximately 60 to 90 days to an average of 12 days, and strengthened child care quality with over 90 percent of programs and schools implementing a singular curriculum.
Today’s announcement further builds on the Adams administration’s two years of core educational accomplishments for New York City public school students, including implementing a major literacy initiative through “NYC Reads;” instituting nation-leading dyslexia supports; expanding Gifted and Talented Programs; increasing math test scores by 12 percent and English language arts test scores by 3 percent in 2023; building nine new schools for the 2024-2025 school year alone; helping students prepare for college and careers; cementing new labor contracts for teachers, principals, and staff; and, most recently, unveiling a signature math initiative, “NYC Solves,” as well as creating the Division of Inclusive and Accessible Learning to prioritize the city’s most vulnerable students and families, including multi-language learners and students with disabilities.
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