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New York added 2,000 free preschool seats and called it universal. Last year 1 in 5 free seats sat empty

New York added 2,000 free preschool seats and called it universal. Last year 1 in 5 free seats sat empty.

New York added 2,000 free preschool seats and called it universal. Last year 1 in 5 free seats sat empty
A child at an early childhood program.
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Mayor Zohran Mamdani is selling universal child care, and this spring he had a number to show for it: 2,000 new free preschool seats. The problem the headline skips is that the city already had thousands of free seats nobody was using, and the new push barely moved the needle on how many families actually got in.

Start with the expansion. The city doubled its planned 3-K expansion to 2,000 new free seats opening across all five boroughs this September, spread across 56 ZIP codes where demand was going unmet. Separately, Mamdani and Governor Hochul launched free 2-K for two-year-olds, income-blind for the first time in city history, funded by $73 million in state money for the first 2,000 seats, part of a $1.2 billion early-care commitment.

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Featured image: University of the Fraser Valley / CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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