Mayor de Blasio Announces Record 70,000 Families Offered Pre-K

Mayor de Blasio Announces Record-Breaking 70,000 Families will be Offered Pre-K Seats This Week

82 percent of parents will get one of their top-three choices, 70 percent will get their top choice

Thousands more pre-K Seats will be available in June for round two of applications

Free, full-day, high-quality pre-K saves parents $10,000 in childcare costs

Mayor Bill de Blasio today announced that in the first round of pre-K offers, 69,393 applicants will receive an offer for free, full-day, high-quality pre-K later this week. Because of strong planning to match available seats with family demand, 70 percent of families will be awarded their top choice program and 82 percent of families will get one of their top 3 choices. Every family that applied will receive an offer, and there will be thousands of new seats available for the next round of admissions later this month.

The Mayor made the announcement at P.S. 5, The Ellen Lurie School, in Washington Heights where he handed offers of admission to Olivio Capellan and his four children to attend pre-K this fall. Each of the four children received an offer to P.S. 5, where programs specifically focus on helping children whose parents are immigrants to develop English language skills.

Families big and small flocked to pre-K this year, including 1,113 sets of twins and 22 sets of triplets who applied for and will receive offers to pre-K. Parents with children enrolled in free, full-day pre-K save an average of $10,000 annually on childcare costs.

For the first time, the DOE launched a streamlined enrollment process this year that allowed families to apply for pre-K in both district schools and NYC Early Education Centers through one easy-to-fill-out single application. Families were able to easily review all options available to them and rank up to 12 choices on their applications. Previously, parents were required to fill out separate applications – on two separate timelines – for district schools and Early Education Centers. On Wednesday, June 10, families will receive a single offer to their highest possible program choice based on the admissions priorities for district schools and early education centers. Families who did not receive their first choice will be placed on a waitlist at every program they listed higher than the offer they received.

A second round of applications begins June 22. All families – including those who receive offers Wednesday – are eligible to reapply in the second round. More than 1,700 new seats have been added to the pre-K directory in recent days, and thousands more will be added prior to the next round of applications. Families who apply in the second round who received an offer on June 10 do not forfeit their original offer, and students will remain on waitlists at the schools where they have applied.

Families can apply in one of three ways: online at www.nyc.gov/prek, over the phone by calling 311, or in person at one of the DOE’s 12 Family Welcome Centers. The application will be translated into nine languages, and additional translation services are available over the phone in more than 200 languages.

P.S. 5 Ellen Lurie

3703 10th Avenue

Manhattan

June 8, 2015