
Map: See Which Neighborhoods Benefit the Most from Pre-K Expansion
As New York City's universal pre-k program expands, availability and demand vary widely throughout city neighborhoods.
Mayor Bill de Blasio released details Friday of more than 10,000 new full-day seats in community organizations, adding to the 4,000 seats in public schools he announced in April. The mayor said details of a third round of about 8,000 seats, also run by community groups, would be released over the summer.
The new programs are part of the city's goal to offer at least 53,000 full-day seats in September.
Where are those seats located and which neighborhoods have the greatest availability? To find out, Schoolbook mapped the estimated population of four-year-olds against all known full-day pre-k seats. The result is a picture of surplus and scarcity even as almost every corner of the city has seen an expansion.
In Manhattan's Chinatown on the Lower East Side, there are nearly one-and-a-half seats for every child, according to data from the Census Bureau and the Department of Education. That's not the case in most of the borough, however. Areas like the Upper East Side and Yorkville have fewer than five seats for every 100 four-year-olds.
Several neighborhoods in Queens, the South Bronx and Brooklyn, benefited from the community-based group seats. In North Buswhick, for example, there are only 126 available seats in city schools, but 517 in community groups. In the Elmhurst neighborhood in Queens all 396 full-day pre-k seats are at community-based groups. facilities.
We will update the map as information on more seats becomes available.