Amid Pre-K Expansion, Some Classrooms Closing

Low enrollment, health violations and financial problems. These are some of the reasons cited by pre-k providers when speaking of the decision to reduce classes just a few months after Mayor Bill de Blasio pushed for a wide expansion of seats.

WNYC recently learned of three classrooms that have already closed and six more likely to close soon.

Many programs opened new classrooms this fall, on tight deadlines, to produce the promised seats for the pre-k expansion, which brought 53,000 four-year-olds to school. City officials said they don’t know how many classrooms have shuttered since September because they don't track the number of classrooms, only the number of students. But they said they suspect the number of closures is small given the scope of the expansion.

The issue is a charged one. Pre-kindergarten expansion is Mayor Bill de Blasio’s signature initiative, and he presented his impressive enrollment numbers as a badge of success. When a journalist at a November press conference asked Deputy Mayor Richard Buery whether any classrooms had closed, he answered — erroneously — “no.”

“There has been very little disruption related to enrollment,” Wiley Norvell, a spokesman for the mayor, told WNYC. “Whether it’s pre-k or k-12, movement among schools and providers is expected and planned for.”

But on the ground the "movement" can be disruptive. Families were left without a place to send their children, or young students experienced instability at school. 

Classroom closure disrupted the life of Tahese Warley, a first-time teacher who had about a dozen students in her classroom at the Fort George pre-school in the Morrisania section of the Bronx. Because her class and one other were under-enrolled, the directors consolidated the kids under the other teacher and moved Warley to a different site.

After spending a month with the kids, the move was hard.

“I was definitely sad,” she said. “As a new teacher, you start off feeling so nervous and scared and wondering if you’re going to be able to do it. And I was actually feeling, ‘Wow, I’m doing this great job, and the kids are responding to me and I’m responding to them.’”

She said some of the parents cried when she broke the news she was leaving. One child followed her to the new site in Washington Heights, she said.

Soon the other teacher in the Bronx, who was also new, was moved and a third teacher took over the Bronx class. One father said his son doesn’t know his newest teacher’s name, and no longer seems excited about school.

The South Bronx had one of the city’s highest increases in pre-k seats—maybe too high. Right near Fort George, the Children’s Aid Society tabled two other new pre-k classrooms because they too were under-enrolled.

The Guild for Exceptional Children, a special education school that added 32 pre-k students this fall, told parents it would close in January. A six-year dispute with the state over reimbursements left it operating at a $2 million dollar loss. When asked why they won a pre-k contract, city officials said they did not conduct a detailed examination of the group's finances.

And officials say health violations were likely to close two other pre-k classrooms: Noah’s Ark Preparatory School in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, lacks heat and hot water, and Middleton’s Early Learning Center in Jamaica, Queens, was overcrowded and poorly managed, they said. At least 19 students from the schools have already moved to new pre-k centers.

Inspectors were visiting another school after the New York Post reported on allegedly unsafe conditions at the I Love Me Early Childhood Center in Cypress Hills, Brooklyn. 

Mayor Bill de Blasio told reporters on Tuesday, "whenever we hear of an allegation, we send inspectors right away and the inspectors are certainly available to be deployed immediately."

The Department of Health closed nine pre-k programs for health and safety issues as school started last fall, and postponed the opening of 36 others. The last of those postponed programs finally opened in mid-October. 

Officials acknowledged the churn, with programs opening and closing throughout the fall. But overall, they said, the pre-k system is serving more than 53,000 kids with relatively little disruption.