Education Week - June 11, 2014 - 8

N.Y.C. Parents Navigate Prekindergarten Enrollment Maze
Demand is strong
for 45,000 slots
By Christina A. Samuels
With the clock running on finding
a spot in New York state's newly
expanded push for early education,
parents in New York City, in particular,
are navigating a complicated system
to enroll their children in public
preschool programs.
State lawmakers voted in April to
devote $1.5 billion to early-childhood
education for the next five years. In
New York City alone, the aid is expected
to amount to about $300 million
for the 2014-15 school year.
For parents in the city, one path
leads to approximately 20,000 preschool
seats managed by the city's
department of education. This year,
parents were required to submit applications
by late April, and by last
week they had learned if their children
had gotten into the public preschools
of their choice.
A second path leads to about
25,000 preschool slots overseen by
organizations throughout the city,
also known as community-based
early-childhood centers. Those agencies
have their own neighborhoodoutreach
efforts, their own application
procedures, and their own
admissions deadlines.
The process favored savvy, well-informed
parents. But with new money
from the state, and a groundswell of
interest from families who otherwise
might not have known about earlychildhood
offerings, the city is pushing
to make sure all parents know
that preschool seats are open.
Gap-toothed children smile out
from advertisements on taxis, bus
shelters, and subway cars. The city
is hiring workers to canvass underserved
neighborhoods. Parents can
send a text message to a special
number to find out what preschools
are located near them. Plus, Mayor
Bill de Blasio is letting parents know
that if they didn't get the placement
of their choice, they still have options.
"Whether your child is accepted to
a public school program this week or
not, there are more options-both
at community facilities and at other
public schools-to find the right fit,"
he said during a June 3 press conference
at P.S. 239 in Queens. "There's
no limit in how many places you can
apply to, but the important thing is
to apply, and apply now."
Self-Imposed Deadline
New York City is heading toward
a self-imposed deadline of June 26 to
get an idea of how many children are
enrolled in preschool, and where.
"The city is trying to have a better
handle on where they have capacity
and no children, and where they have
an overabundance of children and no
capacity," said Nancy Kolben, the
executive director of the Center for
Children's Initiatives, in New York
City, and a member of a pre-K working
group that Mr. de Blasio formed
soon after his election in November.
But even June 26 is a bit of a moving
target-the city has until October
to submit a final count to the state.
The many moving pieces of the
preschool expansion effort demonstrate
that getting the money to expand
preschool in the city is just the
first step in a complicated process.
"It's a lot to sort through, and I
think this is one of those inevitable
things that happens with this kind
of growth," Ms. Kolben said. "This is
what the [enrollment] system was like
in previous years, but the numbers
weren't changing so dramatically."
The mayor, a Democrat, campaigned
on a platform of making
preschool universal in New York
City, and started working to stir up
interest even before the state legislature
made its funding decision.
The promotional efforts appear to
have worked; the city's education
department has reported receiving
more than 41,000 applications for
the 20,000 preschool seats that the
school district manages.
That potentially leaves 20,000 disappointed
families, but the community-based
early-childhood centers
should not be considered an inferior
choice, Ms. Kolben said. "The public
school application was first, and it
led people to think it was best," she
said. Though the community-based
centers have their own deadlines, the
city has rolled out a common application
form for all the centers.
Anxieties Elsewhere
Randi Levine, the director of the
Early Childhood Education Project,
an initiative of Advocates for
Children of New York, said she was
pleased with the outreach efforts
thus far.
"We're working with [city officials]
to make sure some of the students
who could benefit most from the programs
know about them," Ms. Levine
said, citing children such as those
living in the city's homeless shelters,
Ms. Levine said. City officials have
met with shelter managers to explain
the program to them, let them
know about nearby programs, and
given them a list of eligible children
housed in the shelter. But Ms. Levine
said the city could do more to actually
go into the shelters and sign up
children.
Elsewhere in the state, school districts
still may not be ready to take
advantage of the new money, said
Lauren J. Tobias, the director of policy
for the Schuyler Center for Analysis
and Advocacy, in Albany. That's
because they don't have the money
to pay for the program upfront while
waiting for reimbursement from the
state.
About $40 million was earmarked
for preschool expansion outside of
New York City in the 2014-15 school
year. On June 2, the state released a
request for preschool funding proposals
and gave interested parties three
days to submit any questions-a
tight turnaround, Ms. Tobias said.
The request for proposals also came
after school districts had completed
their budgets for 2014-15.
Advocates worry that if preschool
money goes unspent, it may signal to
lawmakers that there isn't as much
need as preschool promoters may
have thought.
"That's the biggest concern in how
they've structured the reimbursement
process," Ms. Tobias said.
But Mary Morris, the assistant
superintendent of the 2,400-student
Cheektowaga Central School
District near Buffalo, said that her
district was planning to apply for the
$300,000 it needs to expand its current
half-day program, which serves
78 children, to a full-day program.
"Some people say, oh, full-day preK,
that's too much time for kids to
be in school," she said. "But if you
do it right and you look at a whole
child and you provide opportunities
for social-emotional growth, I can't
imagine that it does not help."
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Education Week - June 11, 2014

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