All families and school districts are going to have access to FREE school and child care for 4 year olds.

Right now, not every school district offers Universal Pre-K. School districts like Lancaster, New York and Hamburg, New York both have the program, but such as the case in Lancaster, it is not 100% guaranteed that your child will get in the Universal Pre K. If your district does not offer Universal Pre-K, or you don’t know what that means. Usually it is from the district itself OR a third party that will host and run a Pre-K for residents at NO cost. Sometimes there is not enough space to host every single kid that needs a spot, so their is a lottery.

It certainly is not a perfect system.

Now, Governor Hochul is promising that all families and districts will be able to have the free PRE-K by the 2028-29 school year.

Of course, because New York City sucks up a lot of New York State tax dollars before everyone else gets to benefit, all of the districts in that area have already rolled out universal PRE-K 3 AND 4.

Not only do they have universal Pre-K 4, but they have Pre-K THREE before the rest of the State even has 4. Insane.

While four-year-olds in some parts of New York have long had access to Pre-K, there are dozens of school districts that have not yet been able to make it available. Governor Hochul is providing additional support to ensure truly universal Pre-K for all four-year-olds in the State by the start of the 2028-2029 school year.