Starting a family in one of the most expensive cities in the world requires some advance planning. When Monika Navarro and her husband had a child last year in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, they budgeted for a few years of expensive child care — and assumed that New York City’s free preschool program would take over when their son turned three expected savings: about $13,000.
But shortly after taking office, Mayor Eric Adams cut funding for the 3-K for All program, which had been a signature promise of his predecessor, Bill de Blasio. The year of free care she once thought was guaranteed could mean the difference between her family staying in New York or moving to a cheaper city, Ms. Navarro said.
“I feel like we need to step back and look at these costs and ask, ‘Does this make sense?’” said Ms. Navarro, who described herself as part of the city’s “shrinking middle class.”
The big change at 3-K raises a fundamental question: Should access to one of New York City’s most widespread entitlements be available to everyone — or should it be focused on the city’s neediest neighborhoods?
The debate over whether local governments should provide social services to families who are not in immediate need is having far-reaching implications for U.S. cities as federal funding dries up and mayors cut budgets amid the pandemic. It’s a particularly urgent problem in New York City, where Mr. Adams’ administration is struggling to provide basic services to the most vulnerable residents and even families with incomes above six figures are finding it increasingly difficult to make ends meet.
Adams administration officials have indicated that they believe the city’s financial distress is a reason for the cuts, along with the large number of unfilled 3-K spots in some neighborhoods.
But the mayor is under pressure to make life easier for working families, and cuts to the free preschool program are exacerbating the challenges New Yorkers face.
“There’s no question that New York City is expensive, but people were willing to make that trade-off up to a point,” said James Parrott, director of economic and financial policy at the New School’s Center for New York City Affairs.
But if the city continues to make cuts to 3-K and other services, “at some point people’s willingness to make that trade-off will reach a tipping point,” he said.
A mismatch between supply and demand
While preschool for 4-year-olds is guaranteed for all New York families looking for a place, the 3-K program is currently stuck in a kind of limbo and is no longer universal.
Although 43,000 children were enrolled at the end of last school year, thousands of spots remained unfilled — even as New Yorkers across the socioeconomic spectrum struggle to find and pay for child care.
Adams officials have criticized the previous administration for not being aggressive enough to shift seats to neighborhoods where demand is highest, while former de Blasio aides say City Hall is intentionally weakening the program by it doesn’t promote it, so many parents don’t know it’s fairly available.
The city still does not have a permanent funding source for 3-K. The previous administration used pandemic-era federal money to expand it to most neighborhoods after initially rolling it out in low-income areas, a strategy Mr. Adams did not pursue.
Still, many parents view January of the year their child turns three as a milestone: the moment when they can apply for 3K places. Families can apply for seats for their children at up to 12 locations, at public schools, daycare centers, non-residential daycare centers, or community organizations that have received funding to operate the program.
The Education Department’s website warns parents that spots are “limited” in a lottery system that gives preference to children for spots in their local school district.
In some low-income neighborhoods – including Brownsville, Brooklyn; Harlem; and the South Bronx – there are far more seats than registrations. Elsewhere — particularly in northeast and western Queens and southern Brooklyn — there is a rush among compatible families to secure a handful of available spots.
In interviews, parents used phrases such as “mirage” and “la-la-land” to describe the 3-K landscape. Some said they frantically made notes on the playground about which daycare centers to enroll their infants and toddlers in, searching for those most likely to also provide them with a 3K seat. Some said they were trying to plan the birth of a second child around the time the first might begin 3K training, or considering moving to neighborhoods with more availability.
“This kind of manipulation of the system is exactly what universal access is designed to prevent,” said W. Steven Barnett, senior co-director of the National Institute for Early Education Research.
“It’s not just people in poverty who have difficulty paying for it,” he said.
Since the program’s inception in 2014, the city has marketed universal prekindergarten as a two-for-one proposition: an educational necessity that prepares children for kindergarten while saving parents thousands of dollars a year and making it easier for them to re-enter the workforce.
That it would be available to any family that wanted it was part of the promise.
“Universality means smoothness, ease, convenience,” Mr. de Blasio said in an interview.
It was a rare city program in which the results at least came close to the lofty campaign promises. Studies have shown that the city’s preschool classes are generally of high quality and hundreds of thousands of graduates have benefited from the program.
After Mr. de Blasio began expanding the program to three-year-olds, mothers who lived in parts of the city with more 3-K seats were more likely to work full-time than mothers who lived in neighborhoods without them. This trend continued even after their children completed the program, according to a recent report from the Robin Hood Foundation, a charity focused on fighting poverty in New York.
Adams officials have defended their decision to redirect about $568 million originally budgeted to expand the program by pointing to the approximately 10,000 available 3-K spots that remain unfilled.
Education Ministry officials have stressed the need to provide as many seats as possible to low-income families, but insist they have not abandoned other parents.
“As our city faces difficult financial times, we are protecting this system and ensuring New Yorkers with the least means have a chance to get here,” Nathaniel Styer, a spokesman for the Department of Education, said in a statement.
And while the previous government focused much of its education agenda on expanding pre-kindergarten, Mr. Adams has made improving poor literacy rates and screening for dyslexia the cornerstone of his plan for schools.
Mr. Styer said the city has made progress in strengthening 3-K over the past year: the total number of seats offered increased this year compared to 2022, and the number of families who requested but did not receive a seat , has fallen to around 900 applicants, compared to around 3,000 last year.
He said families who couldn’t get a seat at one of their preferred locations were offered one of the available spots across the city – some of which, he acknowledged, may require a multi-hour commute.
But former de Blasio aides and some politicians say none of this solves the real problem: The Adams administration has largely dismantled the once-robust outreach operation that was created to roll out pre-kindergarten.
This office included staff responsible for tracking and managing enrollment, as well as the ubiquitous advertising. The exodus of staff from the Education Department’s early childhood education office was the death knell for that work, former officials said, and left some parents unaware of the free preschool.
“Suddenly it’s gone.”
Desiree Reid, who runs an early childhood care program from her home near Co-Op City in the Bronx, recently heard from local parents that her older children would get a daycare spot, but her younger siblings, including 3-year-olds, would , needed affordable options. Frustrated, Ms. Reid decided to offer 3-K herself.
Eight months and a ton of paperwork later, she was finally approved to offer an extended Day 3-K, which comes with federal income limits and a separate application.
Ms. Reid had a lot of interest from nearby families, but only two were able to complete their paperwork before school started.
Under Mr. de Blasio, outreach workers likely would have been on call to guide families through the process. Now Ms. Reid has to take on this job.
“Something can be available, but if people don’t know about it, they won’t use it,” she said. “And if it’s not used, then suddenly it’s gone.”
Critics say the solution is to make 3-K truly universal.
Mr. Adams has taken the opposite approach in his early childhood education plan, using a separate pot of state funds to subsidize child care vouchers for children from families of four earning less than $100,000. The vouchers can be used for various types of care for children aged 6 weeks and over and 13 years old.
But early childhood educators are skeptical. Providing preschool places to all families, they said, removes stigma and barriers to entry, strengthens political will to maintain programs even in times of austerity, and creates pressure to maintain high-quality programs.
The idea behind New York City’s universal preschool program was to create two new grade levels that would become part of the broader public school system, which in turn would help bring more middle-class families into schools.
Ms. Navarro, the Brooklyn mom, desperately wants to be a public school mom. But first she had to look for the right place to enroll her son Joaquín, who is almost two years old, in daycare.
She eventually found a high-quality program with a diverse group of children who seemed willing to offer 3-K. But now that center has no plans to offer the program, and it’s unclear whether he will win a spot in a high-stakes lottery for seats nearby.
Ms. Navarro decided to take him out of his original program and enroll him in another center that offers 3-K. She was told that Joaquín had a 50 percent chance of winning one of those dozen or so seats. It’s a risk she’s willing to take.