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Most of the 2,000 initial seats available through Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s new free child care program for 2-year-olds will run 10 hours a day, year-round, officials said Thursday.
The full-day and full-year coverage sets the 2-K program apart from the city’s 3-K and prekindergarten programs, which in most cases only cover the cost of child care for six hours and 20 minutes a day from September to June, following the K-12 school calendar.
That limited coverage forces many working families to pay out of pocket for child care in the afternoons and summer months, adding up to thousands of dollars a year.
“For too long, parents have been forced to choose between their livelihood and their children, or to drain their savings just to make it through the workday,” Mamdani said in a statement. “That ends now.”
The extended calendar means families will get 260 days a year of free child care, compared to 180 under the school year calendar.
The city is currently in the process of issuing contracts to private child care providers who will get city funding to offer the initial 2,000 2-K seats. Officials are rolling out the program in five school districts, covering areas in Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx with high levels of need.
City officials are planning to open an additional 10,000 2-K seats in fall 2027, and hope to bring the program citywide by the end of Mamdani’s first mayoral term in 2030.
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Applications for families open in June for children who turn 2 in 2026, and the program starts in September. But at some programs, because of health codes, children who turn 2 between the start of the program in September and the end of 2026 will have to wait until their second birthday to start.
Child care providers in the 2-K program will still have the option of offering a school year and school day calendar if that better suits their families’ needs, according to city officials, who didn’t provide an estimate on how many seats would run for limited hours.
In the city’s 3-K and pre-K programs, the vast majority of seats run for only school day and school year hours. A smaller number of seats run for extended hours, but are only open to families who qualify as low income. Those full day and full year seats have been filled at a far lower rate than the school day and school year seats, which are open to all children in the designated age group.
Officials said the cost of extended hours for the 2-K program is covered under Gov. Kathy Hochul’s commitment to fund the first two years of the rollout. They didn’t immediately say what the cost difference is between a 2-K seat that follows the school calendar and a full-year seat.
Advocates are pushing the city to make more 3-K and pre-K seats full day and full year.
“We’re closer than ever to the child care system New York families have asked for and deserve,” said Rebecca Bailin, executive director of New Yorkers United for Child Care. “We’re not stopping until we get there.”
Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org