announced the expansion during a press conference in Inwood on Tuesday<\/a>. The initiative will place the city\u2019s Nest, Horizon, AIMS, Path and ACES programs in 14 school districts, including Staten Island\u2019s District 31.<\/p>\nThe $67.5 million investment, included in the Fiscal Year 2027 Executive Budget, aims to give young children access to specialized instruction closer to their homes. The programs will serve children with autism and other disabilities, with instruction designed to strengthen both academic and social development.<\/p>\n
\u201cChildren with disabilities should not be forced to travel across the city just to get the education they deserve,\u201d Mamdani said. \u201cThat\u2019s why we\u2019re bringing those classrooms closer to home and taking another critical step toward making Pre-K truly universal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Programs will open at more than 30 schools, including PS 54 in Willowbrook. As of the 2024-2025 academic year, the school served 681 students. <\/p>\n
Other schools include PS 42 in Manhattan\u2019s District 2, PS 212 in Brooklyn\u2019s District 21, and PS 6 in the Bronx\u2019s District 12.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor the first time, we\u2019re giving young children with autism and other disabilities the same high-quality, specialized instruction that has delivered real results for our older students,\u201d Samuels said.<\/p>\n
The expansion includes significant staffing increases to address long-standing challenges in the special education system, with plans to hire hundreds of new staff members to assist with evaluations and assessments.<\/p>\n
The investment also adds 35 new professionals across 10 additional Preschool Regional Assessment Centers, including psychologists, social workers, speech evaluators and occupational therapists.<\/p>\n
The Special Education Itinerant Teacher program will also place special education teachers in general education preschool classrooms to help children with Individualized Education Programs learn alongside their peers. An additional 29 therapists and specialists will also support children in community-based 3-K and Pre-K programs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. \u2014 New York City will bring specialized education programs to preschool classrooms for the first…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":297792,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[9,24,63,113285,134,136,135],"class_list":["post-297791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-staten-island","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-photos-show-obama-and-mamdani-reading-to-preschoolers-in-the-bro","tag-staten-island","tag-staten-island-headlines","tag-staten-island-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=297791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297791\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/297792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}