{"id":312141,"date":"2026-08-02T23:36:07","date_gmt":"2026-08-02T23:36:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/312141\/"},"modified":"2026-08-02T23:36:07","modified_gmt":"2026-08-02T23:36:07","slug":"nyc-early-childhood-chief-simone-hawkins-to-leave-education-department","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/312141\/","title":{"rendered":"NYC early childhood chief Simone Hawkins to leave Education Department"},"content":{"rendered":"<p data-block-key=\"hseml\">New York City Public Schools Deputy Chancellor Simone Hawkins is stepping down in September, she and other city officials confirmed Sunday.<\/p>\n<p data-block-key=\"jtql\">Hawkins oversaw the Division of Early Childhood Education for the past two years, leading the city&#8217;s programs for children from birth to age 5, including 3-K, pre-K and the rollout of the city&#8217;s new 2-K program set to launch this fall.<\/p>\n<p data-block-key=\"9av5m\">&#8220;I am deeply proud of all that my team and I have accomplished in service of our youngest New Yorkers,&#8221; Hawkins said in a statement. &#8220;Over the past two years as Deputy Chancellor, we&#8217;ve improved practice, launched 2-K, a historic program that will deliver affordable child care for New York City families, and opened schools that for too long have sat vacant.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p data-block-key=\"pua5\">Hawkins was appointed deputy chancellor in 2024 under former Mayor Eric Adams&#8217; administration. Chancellor Kamar Samuels thanked Hawkins for her &#8220;tremendous efforts&#8221; expanding early childhood programs and addressing long-running payment bottlenecks for providers.<\/p>\n<p data-block-key=\"3bs82\">During Hawkins&#8217; tenure, child care providers continued to raise concerns about delayed city payments, an issue city officials said they were working to address.<\/p>\n<p data-block-key=\"1gf0q\">Hawkins leaves as the city prepares to open the <a href=\"https:\/\/gothamist.com\/news\/free-2-k-applications-open-next-week-in-nyc-here-is-the-first-group-of-providers\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">first 2,000 seats<\/a> in its new universal 2-K program this fall.<\/p>\n<p data-block-key=\"7pf0b\">City officials did not say why she is leaving or who will replace her.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New York City Public Schools Deputy Chancellor Simone Hawkins is stepping down in September, she and other city&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":312142,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9,56,63,65,64],"class_list":["post-312141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312141","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=312141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312141\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/312142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}