Mayor de Blasio’s pre-kindergarten plan could cost city taxpayers more than they bargained for.
The City Council is sounding the alarm over whether the state’s promised allocation of $300 million a year to expand pre-K will cover administrative fees estimated at $28.5 million annually.
“It is unclear if the city will be able to use the state funds for administrative and other costs, or if the state funding will solely be allocated to schools and service providers on a per-pupil basis,” council members wrote in a response to the mayor’s preliminary fiscal-2015 budget.
The city is already going to have to come up with $40 million a year to cover the estimated $340 million price tag of the new early-education classes.
With the sudden new cost, the city’s tab for the program would jump to $68.5 million a year — or $342.5 million over the life of the plan.
Council members say they don’t want the mayor plugging the potential pre-K funding gap by diverting money from other vital Department of Education initiatives.
“The DOE should not use funds that would have otherwise been allocated for school budgets to pay for UPK [Universal Pre-K] expansion,” the members wrote in their 45-page budget response.
A mayoral spokesman insisted there was no funding problem.
“We are reviewing the council’s proposals, but do not anticipate any issue here,” said Wiley Norvell.
The council raised the red flag as the DOE announced a 36 percent jump in applications for public-school pre-K slots, to 41,603, up about 11,000 from last year.
Since the DOE is offering just over 20,000 full-day pre-K seats in public schools starting September, many of those families will have to seek alternative slots in spaces run by nonprofits.