Mayor Bill de Blasio and Schools Chancellor Carmen Farina are advocating for the city to implement universal pre-kindergarten.
Mayor de Blasio continued to press his goal of offering universal pre-kindergarten for all 4-year-olds in New York City, announcing Tuesday that a newly appointed deputy mayor would focus much of his efforts on the pre-K plan.
Additionally, city Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña said late last week that revisions were being made to the 2015-19 capital plan in order to add 7,000 public school classroom seats to expand full-day pre-kindergarten, as well as reduce overcrowding in other grades.
The mayor tapped Richard Buery for a newly created position, deputy mayor for strategic policy initiatives, and de Blasio said Buery, who previously headed the Children’s Aid Society, will set his sights on advancing the mayor’s pre-K plan. Buery is now tasked with persuading state lawmakers – and Cuomo – to allow the city to increase income taxes on city residents earning $500,000 or more to fund the pre-K program.
While both de Blasio and Cuomo support expanding pre-K, the two disagree as to how to fund such a program. In opposition to the mayor’s plan to raise taxes, Cuomo announced he wants to fund a statewide pre-kindergarten program using state financing instead of new taxes.
“Richard is a powerful advocate who knows what it takes to lift up working families,” de Blasio said Tuesday. “He gets the big picture and will make sure that agencies are working together to achieve our biggest priorities.”
Buery will begin his position on March 3 and will earn an annual salary of $212,614.
“This is the opportunity of a lifetime,” Buery said. “It’s been my mission in life to help families work their way up the economic ladder. No agency, no community group can do that alone.”
To further push the city’s pre-kindergarten proposal, Fariña, the city’s new schools chancellor, announced last week revisions to the city’s proposal capital plan for 2015 to 2019. As part of the revisions, the creation about 7,000 classroom seats would be added to the plan in order to expand pre-K in the city. The revisions, which would also include the creation of additional seats to reduce class size in other grades, would increase the overall funding for the plan from $12 billion to $12.8 billion.
“These are important steps that will dramatically improve educational outcomes for our students,” Fariña said.
Currently, fewer than 27 percent of the city’s 4-year-olds have access to a full-day pre-K program. The mayor and the city Department of Education have laid out a plan to increase the number of full-day pre-kindergarten seats to close to 54,000 by this September, from the 19,483 that currently exist. By January 2016, de Blasio has said he expects there to be more than 73,000 pre-K seats.
The revisions to the capital plan rely on various funding sources, including the state Smart schools Bond Act and a re-programming of charter and partnership programs. About $800 million would come from the bond act, and another $210 million from the restructuring of charter schools. Of these funds, $490 million would be available for technology in schools and $310 million would help to cover the full-day pre-kindergarten seats, according to the city.
By Anna Gustafson
