Mayor de Blasio’s ambitious pre-K expansion provided a bigger boost to parents in well-off Staten Island and Queens than in the needy Bronx, a study claims.
“It threatens to write a new chapter in the tale of two cities,” said Bruce Fuller, a University of California, Berkeley professor and chief author of the analysis.
The de Blasio administration reacted angrily, saying Fuller’s findings were filled with errors and “false assumptions.”
The report compared the rate of increase in new pre-kindergarten seats by borough and ZIP code.
The city has added 25,000 new, full-day, pre-K slots in public schools and in separate facilities run by community-based organizations.
Staten Island, with an average income of $70,560, saw the highest percentage increase — 63.7 percent — in schools. In addition, the borough saw a 30 percent jump in pre-K slots in programs run by CBOs.
The number of seats in Queens, a borough with an average income of $53,054, shot up about 35 percent in both public school and not-for-profit programs, the report said.
By comparison, the number of seats in The Bronx, where the average income is $32,568, increased by about 10 percent in schools and about 14 percent in CBOs.
Pre-K seats also surged 36 percent for families residing in ZIP Codes with incomes higher than the city’s average of $51,865, compared to 15 percent in the lowest quarter of ZIP Codes, where the income averages $38,361.
“It did surprise us. It’s concerning that in the first year, more of the benefits went to better-off parents. It goes against de Blasio’s earlier campaign rhetoric,” said Fuller, an early-childhood and education expert with 20 years in the field.
City Hall blasted the report as shoddy science.
“This study is based on errors and false assumptions that no New Yorker or early-education expert would ever make. Calling Queens a wealthy borough — when we’re serving neighborhoods like Flushing and Jamaica with average incomes lower than $20,000 year — is not just misleading, it’s offensive,” said mayoral spokesman Wiley Norvell.
Using a different measure, the Department of Education boasted that 3,293 new pre-K slots were created in the city’s 10 poorest ZIP Codes and just 288 in the 10 wealthiest.