UWS GETS 18 NEW PRE-K SPOTS FOR SEPTEMBER; MORE TO COME

District 3, which includes the Upper West Side, is getting 18 new full-day pre-Kindergarten spots under the city’s new expanded program. It’s a small drop in the bucket but is likely to lead to larger additions.

The 18 spots are at PS 185, a magnet school at 20 West 112th street. To apply for that school or the others in the neighborhood, go here (if you’ve already applied, you can update your application too). The new deadline is April 23. To see a timeline of the application process and information sessions, go here. For a review of the new pre-K expansion, click here.

In total, the city is poised to add 4,268 pre-K seats in public schools for the coming school year for a grand total of 20,387 seats.

The neighborhood, like other parts of the city, doesn’t even come close to meeting demand for pre-K. As of last year, District 3 offered just 424 full-day spots (442 after including part-time spots), and most schools had 5 to 10 times as many applications as they had openings. Yes, it was about as hard to get into pre-K on the UWS as it was to get into Harvard, and even more random.

So the 18 new openings won’t do much to alleviate that. But this is just the first step in the pre-K expansion.

The vast majority of new spots will apparently be added at community-based organizations like Goddard Riverside and the Bloomingdale Family Program, as well as religious schools. Those should be announced later in the spring (it’s not clear whether any of those spots will be income-restricted, but we’re checking). By the following year, there should be enough pre-K seats for every kid in the city to get one.

The CBOs involved are listed on pages 80 and 81 of this document.