Politico | More than 80 organizations are pressuring Mayor Eric Adams to include funding in his executive budget to support preschoolers with disabilities.
The groups — which include Advocates for Children of New York — want Adams to renew $55 million for preschool special education classes. The funding is set to expire at the end of the fiscal year in June.
The city allocated the money last year. But as of last month, over 600 preschoolers were still waiting for a seat in either a special education class or a class with an integrated setting, which refers to students with disabilities learning alongside other pupils.
“We should not have to fight year after year for the city to fulfill its basic legal obligations to its youngest students,” the groups wrote in a letter to the mayor this morning, shared exclusively with Playbook.
The funding fight represents a political vulnerability for the embattled Democratic mayor, who faced backlash for lagging on opening new preschool classes despite a promise to guarantee seats for everyone.
Other demands in the letter include $70 million to provide pupils with the evaluations and services they need. As of March, over 7,900 preschoolers were waiting for at least one of their legally mandated services to begin, with over half not receiving any of them.
Additionally, they urged the city to include educators who serve students with disabilities in an agreement that boosts wages for early childhood workers.
