Overall enrollment in New York City's preschool programs has remained relatively flat even as Mayor Zohran Mamdani makes a new push to market them using ads and his considerable reach on social media.
Mamdani on Tuesday said more families who applied to 3-K were offered spots in their top choice than was the case last year. But overall applications for both pre-K and 3-K programs were virtually unchanged, dropping by less than 1% compared to last year.
The stagnant enrollment coincides with a lower birth rate, families with young children leaving the city en masse, and a drop in immigrant arrivals amid a federal crackdown. But the numbers also raise questions about the effectiveness of the mayor’s social media strategy. Mamdani for months has aggressively promoted the programs on his social media, taxicabs and Link NYC kiosks.
“It shows a limit to his reach on social media to this specific audience,” said Matthew Wing, a political strategist who runs Hack NY, a social media channel that teaches New Yorkers how to find services. “This should be a learning opportunity for them.”
Mamdani attributed the lower enrollment to “sustained disinvestment” in pre-K by his predecessor Mayor Eric Adams, as well as decreased immigration.
“We inherited a barebones outreach team,” Mamdani told reporters Tuesday. But he said the city’s decision to provide childcare seats closer to where families lived would help bolster pre-K programs in future years.
Mamdani spoke at a press conference alongside Gov. Kathy Hochul outside a preschool in Jackson Heights. He thanked the governor for giving the city $1.2 billion in funding to expand childcare and pre-K programs. Citywide, more than 90,000 children participate in the preschool programs.
The city notified parents about 3-K offers for the upcoming school year on Tuesday. That followed the Mamdani administration's furious effort — buoyed by a $100 million investment from Hochul — to alleviate seat shortages and deliver on his promise to relieve exorbitant childcare costs.
Numbers provided by the Mamdani administration show 70% of families received their first choice, up from 65% last year. About 84% of families received one of their top three choices, up from 80% last year.
The number of families placed in programs they didn’t choose dropped to 12% this year, compared to 15% last year. On average, those families were offered seats 17 city blocks closer to where they live.
Mamdani this week doubled his commitment to expand the number of 3-K seats, adding a total 2,000 seats. With applications outpacing available seats in some areas, parents were often forced into lengthy waitlists or assigned slots more than 3 miles from their homes. Meanwhile, programs sat empty in other neighborhoods.
Fewer than 200 families received offers outside their home boroughs, a decline from the 720 families in the same situation last year. Those 200 families were offered seats within 3 miles from their homes. Most of them will have an opportunity to add themselves to a waitlist for new seats that were added after the application process ended.
City officials said about 700 new seats were added after the application process closed, and parents can apply directly to those programs by adding themselves to the waitlist through myschools.nyc. Once those seats are offered in the coming weeks, the city expects even more families to find spaces nearer to their homes.
Families who didn’t get any of their ranked choices were placed in programs located about a mile away, on average. Last year, those families were assigned to seats that on average were nearly 2 miles away, city data shows.
Under Adams, thousands of families were denied 3-K seats, following his decision to stop the expansion of the program. Some families were placed on waitlists with more than 100 other children.
Mamdani promised to bring relief for parents struggling with childcare bills, which average upwards of $20,000 a year. To deliver on his promise, he opened formerly vacant preschool facilities, rolled out messaging campaigns to get more families to apply for 3-K and contracted more community based providers to work with the city.
The 3-K program offers six hours of care usually from September through June, with additional hours available in some programs for parents who pay.
About 42,600 families applied for the city’s 3-K program, city numbers show, fewer than the 43,200 who did in 2025. Both years reflect about half of the eligible 3-year-olds in the city, despite Mamdani’s efforts to boost outreach this year.
Applications for pre-K also remained flat, with about 60% of eligible families applying, the same as last year.
Mamdani said his proposed budget will commit to funding $5 million in future outreach efforts to engage more eligible families.
"At this time last year, we were fighting to keep 3-K alive, while thousands of parents couldn't get the 3-K seats they were counting on, forcing them to draw down their savings to afford private care," said Rebecca Bailin, executive director of advocacy group New Yorkers United for Child Care. "This year couldn't be more different."
