A $30,000 Question: Who Will Get a Free 3-K Seat in NYC?

In Brooklyn Heights, a couple that wanted to have a second child is reconsidering, anxious over crushing child care expenses and cutbacks to prekindergarten programs.

In Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, a mother may move to a more expensive neighborhood nearby where she would be more likely to receive no-cost child care when her daughter turned 3.

And in Stuyvesant Town in Manhattan, a mother who lost her job worries about what the future might hold if her daughter does not get into a free program.

Their stories are signs of the fresh upheaval that families across New York City are facing, as Mayor Eric Adams has abandoned plans to make the city’s 3-K program universal. The pullback comes as New Yorkers face an intensifying child care crisis that has helped fuel a sharp increase in poverty.

For nearly a decade, every 4-year-old in New York has been eligible for a free prekindergarten seat — and 3-year-olds were set to be next in line. The unusual program was designed to make staying in an increasingly unaffordable city more tenable for thousands of families, whose continued presence would also benefit the city’s economy.

But instead of expanding the 3-K program, the Adams administration has slashed the city’s preschool budget by about $170 million in recent months because of empty seats.

As applications for the coming school year opened in January, the Education Department’s website informed parents that there would be seats available for all 3-year-olds in just half of the city’s 32 local school districts. In the other half, spots would be given to “as many families as possible.”

The disruption has ignited a high-stakes competition to win a coveted seat, and prompted profound anxiety for many lower-income and middle-class families.

Mayor Adams has said improving access to affordable child care is a top priority, and created a new office last year to oversee early childhood strategy. But its executive director quietly departed in October, after eight months on the job, and a permanent replacement has not been named, raising questions about the status of those efforts.

For parents navigating the increasingly uncertain process, what was once a time of relief has become a frenzy of confusion.

Megan Moskop-Toler, whose Brooklyn family spends more on child care than on rent, said the idea of leaving New York had become “more appealing.”

“Having 3-K and 4-K as a possibility is really huge for us,” Ms. Moskop-Toler said. She is applying to free preschool for her son, but also has a newborn daughter. “Will that be an option for her?”

Amaris Cockfield, a spokeswoman for the mayor, said the city was investing billions in early child care and shifting “thousands of seats” to “immediately meet demand and expand access” for families.

“We are committed to ensuring that every child who needs a seat has one in a nearby neighborhood,” she said in a statement.

After an inquiry from a New York Times reporter, the department updated the 3-K website — a week before the March 1 application deadline — to remove the breakdown of districts and seat availability. In interviews with more than a dozen parents, nearly all said they had already used it to craft their plans.

An uncertain landscape

In a city where many families spend more than $30,000 a year on child care for a single toddler, Mayor Bill de Blasio’s creation of an expansive free preschool network became a beloved entitlement.

Huge numbers of mothers in particular leave their careers because they lack access to affordable child care, and the programs in New York have enabled more of them to remain in the work force.

Today, prekindergarten for 4-year-olds remains universal. But the future of the 3-K program is in flux. The Adams administration has not presented a plan to fund it after more than $90 million in federal pandemic aid expires this fall, and the administration’s management of early childhood programs has become a lightning rod for criticism.

“It’s a slap in the face to women and to gender equity,” said Rebecca Bailin, who leads the newly formed New Yorkers United for Child Care, a group that advocates universal programs.

Ms. Bailin said she recently met a couple in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, who enrolled their 3-year-old in a private program because they did not know free options were available.

“Even the most highly educated and well resourced of our community are struggling to know what’s going on,” she said.

Administration officials have often said that they inherited a flawed operation, pointing to the high numbers of unused seats in certain neighborhoods. “We saw a system that was totally not aligned correctly,” Mayor Adams said in a recent radio interview.

“Our goal is to make sure every child that wants a seat will get a seat,” he added. Still, it remains unclear whether all of those children will have them.

The city paid a consulting company about $760,000 last year to map out preschool needs, and the firm said it expected an increase from previous years in both 3-K applications and enrollment. It projected demand for up to 59,400 seats this fall. But only about 53,000 seats will be available, the city said.

As the application period comes to a close, families are anxiously awaiting the release of offers, expected in the spring.

In crowded neighborhoods like the Upper West Side of Manhattan, parents have struggled to make plans while enormous child care bills loom. In areas like Prospect Lefferts Gardens in Brooklyn, where 3-K programs are scarce, others are already bracing to not receive a suitable offer.

And many who expected to rely on free preschool are now struggling to imagine life without it. “It’s become paramount,” said Emily Johnson, who lives in Stuyvesant Town on the East Side of Manhattan and was recently laid off.

Ms. Johnson said she was already draining her savings to pay for her daughter’s care. But she lives in a competitive district, and her current day care center has been unable to gain approval to join the network of free prekindergarten providers.

“I’m trying not to get disheartened,” she said. “It’d be life-changing.”

Shelley Cheung Claudon, a single mother in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, said she questions how parents with less time and means are supposed to navigate the preschool application process. “It’s just a very opaque system,” she said.

It was an in-the-know parent who helped Gina Lee, a mother in Downtown Brooklyn, secure a 3-K seat this year. Her daughter did not receive an offer when she applied, and was behind dozens of other children on waiting lists.

But the other parent encouraged Ms. Lee to directly reach out to one of the programs she had applied to, after classes began.

On a Friday afternoon, she tried the school and received unexpected news: Her daughter had a spot — but she would need to start on Monday. “Had I not called,” Ms. Lee said, “I would have continued to pay $3,500 a month for a private school.”

‘A real inflection point’

The uncertainty comes as parents grapple with a broader problem: More than 80 percent of families in New York City cannot afford full-time child care.

On Tuesday, the 5Boro Institute, a new think tank created by allies of the mayor, became the latest influential voice to call for change.

In a far-reaching report, the group said the city needed to take “immediate action” to save the system from collapse, including by filling widespread staff vacancies, boosting outreach to vulnerable families and raising wages for workers.

The city has also left hundreds of millions of dollars in state funding for child care on the table, it said.

“The sector overall is really in crisis,” Grace Rauh, the group’s executive director, said. “We are at a real inflection point.”

Ms. Cockfield, the mayoral spokeswoman, pointed to the administration’s creation of a new website to apply for child-care assistance that she said had helped 30,000 families, as well as efforts to clear a waiting list for vouchers and enroll more children.

The 5Boro Institute report acknowledged those steps, calling them “important,” but added that “we need to do more now.”

Some experts worry that preschool rollbacks could fuel a chain reaction: If more parents are unable to obtain affordable care and opt to leave New York, the pipeline for public school enrollment could drop off — prompting further cuts to programs.

Families with children under 6 are already twice as likely to leave the city, according to the Fiscal Policy Institute, a nonpartisan research group.

Sara Lord, a new parent in Harlem, said she has felt unsure whether her family could sustain a life in the city.

Her paychecks were going entirely to her daughter’s day care — and then she lost her job.

She is relieved to live in a district where all children are expected to receive 3-K spots. But she remains disappointed that “there really still isn’t a solution from birth to 3.”

“It feels very much like the city wasn’t built for families,” she said.

Emma G. Fitzsimmons contributed reporting.