NYC Conducting Careful Tally of Pre-K Expansion Numbers

Surrounded by dozens of piles of files, each representing one pre-kindergarten child, Alexandra Minsky is typing up vital statistics.

Her data entry in a Department of Education office in Midwood is the heart of a long process of verifying tens of thousands of children and arriving at a final enrollment number for Mayor Bill de Blasio’s expanded pre-kindergarten program.

De Blasio announced that more than 51,000 four-year-olds registered last month which is more than double the number that attended full-day pre-k last year. His target figure remains 53,000 children enrolled. A high enrollment figure would be a political win, and help the mayor make his case in Albany for funding a second expansion of another 20,000 spots next year.

So now there are about 100 workers throughout the city, many working overtime, sifting through mounds of records.

Each child attending school in a private pre-k program must submit a birth certificate and proof of address, as well as basic personal data. Workers in offices like this one in Midwood must verify the documents, and enter the data into a computer with an antiquated DOS operating system. They must also ensure that there are no duplicate files such as when a child enrolled at one school and then switched to another.

“Is this a double up?” asked one worker.

“Yeah, she’s in there twice,” another replied.

The two have about six feet of files on their desk, another four feet on the floor, and another six feet on top of the cabinet.

“This is analogous to an election,” said Rick Fromberg, a senior advisor on pre-k who is supervising the process. “We are going through the paper ballots and finalizing the count and verifying and re-verifying.”

They are working through last week’s deadline deliveries, when directors of pre-k centers showed up with bankers’ boxes full of files. More are sure to arrive since city officials gave pre-k centers an extension on the Oct. 1 reporting deadline so they could enroll more still children in the coming weeks.