Chancellor Fariña makes case for pre-K and the tax to pay for it at City Council hearing
As part of the city’s full-court press to obtain the funding to roll out Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Universal pre-Kindergarten and after-school programs, New York City Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña laid out details of how it would all work at an hours-long City Council hearing on Tuesday.
In answering questions from members of the Education and Women’s Issues Committees, Fariña said one of the city’s goals was maintaining program quality across a variety of pre-K providers and the recruitment and training of early childhood teachers, whose numbers would double under the proposal.
Fariña and Sophia Pappas, Executive Director of Early Childhood Education at the Department of Education (DOE), explained some of the intricacies of the multi-agency system the city hopes to put in place, and spoke about the necessity of a dependable funding stream.