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What New York’s Budget Deal Means for Preschool and Other Education Programs
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A tentative budget deal announced Friday will funnel additional dollars into New York City’s free preschool program for 3-year-olds, but it falls short of the full restoration sought by child care advocates.
The agreement on the city’s total budget of $112.4 billion comes just days before a July 1 deadline and follows months of negotiations between the City Council and Mayor Eric Adams’ administration. The turbulent budget process has seen Adams oversee several rounds of polite It is restorations to the Department of Education budget as New York City braces for the end of billions of dollars in federal pandemic relief money.
Officials did not say how much total funding would be allocated to the city’s Education Department during Friday’s announcement. In April, the mayor’s proposal dedicated $32.2 billion to city schools. That proposal represented a 2.4 percent, or $808 million, decline in funding for the upcoming fiscal year.
Still, the city’s contribution to the Department of Education budget — which also includes federal and state dollars — is expected to increase by at least $1.6 billion. However, that additional funding is not enough to offset the $2.4 billion shortfall in federal funding.
The final budget represents a significant victory for advocates who feared that City Hall would institute deep spending cuts beyond the expiration of federal aid. But in the end, Mr. Adams pared back the worst of the cuts and found hundreds of millions in city money to replace federal dollars.
“We started the year by sounding the alarm,” wrote Kim Sweet, executive director of Advocates for Children, an organization that represents families with high needs and has lobbied hard for restoration funding. “We are grateful that the budget agreement includes more than $600 million for critical education initiatives currently supported with expiring federal funds.”
Preschool programs see partial restoration of funding
The budget deal will see an additional $20 million invested in the city’s 3-year-old program to add spots for families without 3rd-grade kindergarten slots, as well as an additional $25 million — which will be on top of the existing $15 million, for a total of $40 million — to expand days and hours in more preschool programs and help fill 3rd-grade kindergarten and preschool slots, according to city officials.
It will also add $30 million to increase funding for preschool special education slots. Children with disabilities have withered without positions despite a promise by Adams to provide universal access, as required by law. Adams had already agreed to replace $56 million in federal funding he had previously directed to stabilize the preschool special education system, and another $25 million to create more seats and help provide other services like speech therapy.
City officials said the additional funding would guarantee a spot for every child with a disability, though it remains to be seen whether that promise will become a reality — as shortages of spots and related services persisted for many years.
Under the budget agreement, a working group will also seek to develop reforms to the early childhood education system, officials said.
The city’s budget “balances fiscal responsibility and caring for working-class New Yorkers,” the mayor said.
But the budget deal will not fully reverse the cuts that early childhood education programs faced this year. The city’s preschool system has taken to center stage in budget negotiations, with council members and advocates pushing for more investment.
Adams presented a plan in April that would replace $92 million expiration of federal funding for 3-K with state and local funds, but that plan did not restore a separate amount of 170 million dollars of city funding that was previously cut from early childhood education programs. The mayor has repeatedly argued that the cuts were necessary because the city was wasting money on thousands of unfilled preschool slots.
While the board initially sought a full restoration of the $170 million cut, Finance Committee Chairman Justin Brannan acknowledged Friday that “some of the numbers are ambitious,” admitting that vacancies were a problem and that the early childhood education system needed deeper reforms.
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“We needed to do more than just restore these cuts,” he said. “We needed to be smart about this, because you have a system now that has a waiting list and a lot of empty seats, so it needs reform… just throwing money at the problem wasn’t going to fix it.”
Despite cuts to the early childhood education system, the mayor has promised that every family who wants a spot in the city’s preschool and 3-K system will receive one.
Still, last month, some families said they I didn’t get a vacancy in any program they applied to — or were admitted to a program that was far from home, presenting serious logistical challenges. Officials later said that many spots remained open and that the city would work with families who were not initially admitted to find open spots nearby.
Board President Adrienne Adams stressed that providing a 3-K slot for every family will require more funding from state sources. “We can’t afford to do this work alone,” she said.
Despite additional funding, concerns about preschool and other programs persist
The looming fiscal cliff has also put the fate of several other education programs in limbo. This includes approximately 400 school nurses hired — some of which provide care in buildings that previously had no school nurses — as well as Promise NYC, a program that offers subsidized childcare for undocumented families.
The budget deal will invest $25 million in Promise NYC, an increase of roughly $9 million, though it was not immediately clear Friday whether it would provide funding for school nurses.
While child care advocates were pleased to see some funding restored, many remained concerned about the state of the city’s early childhood education system. The sector has struggled under Adams, faced with late payment that have hurt many programs. In addition, the city has yet to address the long-standing problem of pay disparity, where teachers in privately run but publicly funded preschool programs earn significantly less than their peers who teach 3- and 4-year-olds in public school programs.
“New York City’s early childhood education system is broken—the needs of children and families are not,” said Nora Moran, director of policy and advocacy at United Neighborhood Houses. “We continue our fight to ensure there is a place for every young New Yorker in our early childhood education system, and we urge the city to invest in our center-based early childhood education workforce, putting them on parity with their public school peers working in the same jobs with the same credentials—something this budget fails to address.”
Budget process marked by repeated cuts and restorations
In recent months, the mayor has announced a series of budget cuts and investments as the city works to fill sizable gaps left by expiring federal relief funds — further clouding the already complicated process by which the city determines its more than $112 billion budget.
In November, the Department of Education cut approximately US$550 million of its budget, as Adams directed a sweeping round of citywide cuts. Another round of cuts in January reduced another 100 million dollars of the budget, although these cuts were less severe than previously anticipated.
Separately, the Adams administration has worked to find state and local resources to replace funding for programs currently supported by federal funds.
In April, the mayor announced that the city would use over US$500 million of city and state funds to plug holes in the Department of Education budget created by the expiration of COVID relief funds. And earlier this month, the mayor announced an additional $127 million would help reverse budget cuts at some schools that have faced enrollment losses, fund restorative justice programs that encourage peer mediation and other non-punitive methods of conflict resolution, and restore hours for the city’s popular Summer Rising program.
While some education programs that were previously supported by federal funding have dedicated city funds that will persist beyond the next fiscal year, others — such as a roughly $92 million expansion of 3-K, the Learning to Work program that supports students at risk of dropping out of school and the Project Pivot program which partners schools and community organizations to reduce violence — will need to be renegotiated during the next budget process, setting off future fights over education funding.
The City Council is expected to formally vote on the budget agreement on Sunday.
Michael Elsen-Rooney contributed reporting.
Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.
Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.