The city will finally open a vacant preschool — on which it has spent millions in renovations and rent — to students this fall, officials said Monday morning.
Parents had been urging the city to open the school at 129 Van Brunt St. for months — through petitions, social media videos and interviews with news outlets, including NY1. The city launched the project under former Mayor Bill de Blasio and spent $12 million renovating the space, plus more than $1 million in rent annually since 2022.
But while parents say it has been finished and ready to serve children for more than a year, it has sat empty — while families navigate long waitlists or long commutes to other 3-K and pre-K programs, or resort to paying for private spots.
What You Need To Know
The city will open the vacant preschool center at 129 Van Brunt St. after spending millions on the school while letting it sit vacant
Families will be able to apply using the waitlist function in the city’s preschool application process, which had already closed
The move comes after advocacy from parents, who said there was a strong need for 3-K and pre-K seats in the neighborhood
There are 63 seats at the Van Brunt Street school, and the city says those are among about 700 seats being added to the preschool system this week.
The news comes after the preschool application period closed — parents received pre-K placements last week and are set to get 3-K seats this week — but the city says parents will be able to apply for these seats using the waitlist system. Parents will still receive placements for seats they already applied for but can add the newly available sites to their waitlists to potentially receive offers to these new programs. The city says family choice, sibling preference and proximity to programs will be prioritized in applications.
“Over the past few months, we have opened nine previously vacant child care centers, added thousands of 3-K seats where families need them most and started rebuilding trust with working families across this city. And we’re just getting started,” Mayor Zohran Mamdani said in a statement.
Of the 63 new seats at the school on Van Brunt St., 45 will be for 3-K. City Hall says it is adding 2,000 new 3-K seats overall.
In a statement, Council Member Shahana Hanif thanked families, local schools and community members for advocating for the site.
“This fully built, publicly funded facility should never have sat empty while families searched for childcare seats close to home, but that is exactly what the previous administration allowed to happen,” she said in a statement. “Parents organized, spoke out and pushed for the resources their community needed. We are finally delivering long-overdue early childhood education seats for neighborhood families and making an important investment in the future of this community.”