Overview
- Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced on Tuesday, July 14, that the city has committed $67.5 million to expand five established special‑education models—Nest, Horizon, AIMS, Path and ACES—into pre‑K classrooms in 14 districts across all five boroughs.
- City officials said the funding will add roughly 250 new program seats in 26 schools and publish a roster of host schools so the rollout is targeted rather than citywide at once.
- The package will fund the hiring of hundreds of staff, including psychologists, social workers, speech evaluators and occupational therapists, and will add employees to Preschool Regional Assessment Centers to shorten wait times for evaluations.
- Officials will expand the Special Education Itinerant Teacher Program to place special‑education teachers inside general preschool classrooms and increase bilingual testing and IEP navigation support to reduce language and procedural barriers for families.
- The move builds on long‑standing efforts to place preschoolers with disabilities in public classrooms closer to home and could lower private placement costs and improve long‑term outcomes if the city can recruit staff and fully implement the program before the fall term.