{"id":312268,"date":"2026-10-22T22:54:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-22T22:54:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/312268\/"},"modified":"2026-10-22T22:54:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-22T22:54:08","slug":"philly-adds-2-new-investments-to-its-free-pre-school-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/312268\/","title":{"rendered":"Philly adds 2 new investments to its free pre-school program"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) \u2014 Philadelphia\u2019s free pre-school program is almost 10 years old and still growing. <\/p>\n<p>Mayor Cherelle Parker said the city added 100 new seats to Philly pre-K this year, bringing the total to more than 5,300 at 238 preschools, 97% of which received the highest quality rating from the state \u2014 almost double what it was when the program started.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHigh-quality early childhood education is one of the smartest, most impactful investments any community can make,\u201d Parker said. <\/p>\n<p>She announced two additional new investments. One is a recruitment and hiring hub that she said will streamline finding and onboarding teachers.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis hub will help reduce the administrative and financial burdens of the clearances, the hiring logistics and the advertisements.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The other is raising the city\u2019s reimbursement rate to the centers by $12.50 per child per month, beginning in January.<\/p>\n<p>The city\u2019s expansion comes as the federal government is poised to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ap.org\/news-highlights\/best-of-the-week\/honorable-mention\/2026\/exclusive-head-start-coverage-shows-impact-of-trump-administration-proposals\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">make changes to Head Start<\/a>, which funds most of the district\u2019s pre-K seats. Critics say it will degrade the program. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) \u2014 Philadelphia\u2019s free pre-school program is almost 10 years old and still growing. Mayor Cherelle&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":312269,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[35226,62496,31557,69,71,70,9385],"class_list":["post-312268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-city-of-philadelphia","tag-early-education","tag-head-start","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-preschool"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=312268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312268\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/312269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}