"When Maria Santana first started dropping off her son Anthony at FirstStepNYC, an early education center in Brownsville, Brooklyn, he would cry for hours, refusing to eat or nap until she picked him up. Santana, who was working as a home health aid, told the center's director that she thought she'd need to pull Anthony out. The director, Catharina Oerlemans, had a better solution: She asked Santana to come work for FirstStepNYC as a food handler."
"FirstStepNYC was originally built in 2013 as a demonstration: What could early education look like if the city drew on the resources and expertise of the school system, the supports provided by a social service agency, and the principles of Head Start, to create a program that works with entire families - starting from before children are born and continuing until they go to kindergarten?"
"As New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani seeks to expand the city's fractured, unwieldy, and financially stressed assortment of subsidized early childhood programs, FirstStepNYC's founder thinks his administration should look to the program as a model again. Mamdani has promised to create 2,000 new "2-Care" seats for 2-year-olds in the fall, with a plan to grow the program to 8,000 seats next year and make it universal in four years."
Maria Santana initially faced long drop-off separations at FirstStepNYC until staff offered her employment, which kept her son enrolled. FirstStepNYC launched in 2013 as a demonstration of an integrated early-education model combining school-system resources, social-service supports, and Head Start principles to serve whole families from prenatal stages through kindergarten. Mayor Zohran Mamdani plans an expansion that includes 2,000 new 2-Care seats for 2-year-olds, growing to 8,000 seats and universal coverage in four years. Advocates warn the expansion faces major financial, logistical, and workforce challenges and that earlier, prenatal supports are crucial to effective early education.
Read at Chalkbeat
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