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As New York City’s free childcare program is on track to reach 12,000 2-year-olds next year, Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Gov. Kathy Hochul revealed Monday which new neighborhoods will get the program.
The expansion will bring the program to 22 of the city’s 32 school districts, including all of the Bronx and Staten Island, after that borough had been left out of this year’s inaugural 2,000 seats. Mamdani has pledged to expand the program citywide for all 2-year-olds who need it by the end of his first term, though Hochul has only committed funding for the first two years.
Hochul committed $73 million to the program this year and plans to spend $425 million next year.
“From Co-op City in the Bronx to Staten Island’s South Shore, we’re bringing 2-K to every borough and making New York City more affordable for working people,” Mamdani said in a statement.
Toddlers who turn 2 in 2027 will be eligible to participate in next year’s program. Officials didn’t immediately provide a breakdown of how many seats will be available in each of the new districts. Officials did not promise that every eligible student in the covered districts would get a seat, but a Mamdani spokesperson said the goal is to reach as many families as possible..
More than 5,000 families applied for the 2,000 seats that opened this year, a sign of unmet demand for the program, officials said.
Unlike the city’s free programs for 3- and 4-year-olds, the city funds most 2-K programs from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., year-round. For participating families, that can mean savings of more than $20,000 a year.
“This is how we deliver real relief for working families, and make sure our kids get the best possible start in life,” Hochul said in a statement.
(Some families, however, need care outside of traditional weekday hours and rely on state-funded childcare vouchers. Earlier this month, Mamdani announced plans to enroll about 10,000 kids from a waitlist that had grown to 30,000.)
To expand 2-K next year, city officials said they will begin reaching out this week to childcare providers in the covered districts who already receive funding from the city to operate 3-K and prekindergarten programs to gauge their interest in opening 2-K seats.
Some, however, may be wary. Many private childcare operators who contract with the city to run 2-K, 3-K and prekindergarten programs said they faced crippling delays in getting their city reimbursements this year — a longstanding problem some providers said grew worse this year.
Mamdani pledged an all-government effort to expedite the approval of new contracts and promised to fill hundreds of staffing vacancies in the Education Department’s early childhood education division.
The 2-K program in its first year relied mostly on family providers who run small childcare programs from their homes, though some larger childcare centers also participated.
Here’s the list of new districts where the program is set to expand. The districts included in this year’s 2-K program — Manhattan’s District 6, the Bronx’s District 10, Brooklyn’s Districts 18 and 23, and Queens’ District 27 — will continue to have the program next year.
Bronx: All districts covered (includes Districts 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12)
Staten Island: All of District 31 covered (the only district in Staten Island)
Manhattan:
- School District 4: East Harlem
- School District 5: Central Harlem, Manhattanville / West Harlem, Morningside Heights, Hamilton Heights / Sugar Hill
Brooklyn
- School District 16: Bedford-Stuyvesant, including Stuyvesant Heights; as well as parts of northern Crown Heights and Ocean Hill
- School District 17: Crown Heights, Prospect Lefferts Gardens, Wingate, Prospect Heights, Flatbush, East Flatbush, as well as parts of Erasmus, Farragut, Rugby, Remsen Village, Ocean Hill and Brownsville
- School District 19: East New York, New Lots, Cypress Hills, City Line, Spring Creek, Starrett City, as well as parts of Ocean Hill, Brownsville and Canarsie
- School District 20: Bay Ridge, Fort Hamilton, Dyker Heights, Bath Beach, as well as parts of Bensonhurst, Borough Park, Sunset Park, Kensington, Gravesend, Mapleton / western Midwood and western Flatbush
- School District 21: Coney Island, Sea Gate, Brighton Beach, Gravesend, Homecrest, Mapleton / Ocean Parkway, Midwood, as well as parts of Bensonhurst, Borough Park, Madison and western Flatbush
- School District 32: Bushwick, as well as parts of East Williamsburg and northern Bedford-Stuyvesant
Queens
- School District 24: Corona, including North Corona; Elmhurst, Maspeth, Middle Village, Ridgewood, Glendale, Sunnyside, Woodside, as well as parts of Jackson Heights, East Elmhurst, Rego Park, Woodhaven, Forest Hills, and Long Island City
- School District 28: Rego Park, Forest Hills, Kew Gardens, Briarwood, Jamaica Hills, Jamaica, South Jamaica, Richmond Hill, South Richmond Hill, South Ozone Park, Baisley Park, Rochdale Village, Springfield Gardens, as well as parts of Kew Gardens Hills, Hillcrest, St. Albans, Glendale, Corona, and Elmhurst
- School District 29: Queens Village, Cambria Heights, Hollis, St. Albans, Laurelton, Rosedale, Springfield Gardens, Brookville, portions of Bellerose, Jamaica Estates, Holliswood, Hillcrest, Jamaica Hills, Jamaica, and South Jamaica
Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.