On July 14, 2026, Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani and New York City Public Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels stood at P.S. 5 Ellen Lurie in Inwood and announced something that families of preschoolers with disabilities have been waiting decades to hear: New York City is finally putting real money behind preschool special education. The City has committed $67.5 million in its Fiscal Year 2027 Executive Budget to expand its nationally recognized specialized programs — Nest, Horizon, AIMS, Path, and ACES — into Pre-K classrooms for the very first time, across 26 schools in 14 community school districts spanning every borough.
At The Law Offices of Regina Skyer & Associates, LLP, we have spent more than three decades representing families whose youngest learners with disabilities were routinely left behind by a Pre-K system that called itself “universal” while quietly excluding the very children who most needed early, intensive, and specialized instruction. Today's announcement is a meaningful step toward closing that gap, and we applaud the Mayor, the Chancellor, the City Council, and the advocacy community for making it happen.
Why This Investment Matters
For years, families of preschoolers with autism, developmental delays, and other disabilities have been forced to make impossible choices. Too often, a three-year-old with significant needs was told that the only “appropriate” Pre-K placement was across the city — a bus ride of an hour or more away from home — or that no seat existed at all. Meanwhile, the Committee on Preschool Special Education (CPSE) system remained backlogged, evaluations were delayed for months, and Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) were routinely written without the specialized program capacity to implement them.
The result was predictable and, frankly, unlawful under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA): thousands of preschoolers going months, and sometimes an entire school year, without the services their IEPs required. A 2023 report from Advocates for Children of New York found that 37 percent of preschool students with disabilities went the 2021-2022 school year without receiving at least one mandated service. That is not a statistic; that is a generation of children losing critical developmental windows that can never be recovered.
“Students with disabilities cannot afford administrative delay or political calculation. Their educational timelines are finite. Lost years cannot be recovered through policy memos or budget explanations.”
— Regina Skyer, Letter to Chancellor Kamar H. Samuels (February 18, 2026)
The programs being expanded — Nest, Horizon, AIMS, Path, and ACES — are not aspirational. They are proven. Nest students are 50 percent more likely, and Horizon students two times more likely, to be proficient in math and English Language Arts than the citywide average for students with disabilities. AIMS classrooms have delivered dramatically higher attendance rates for students with intensive communication needs. ACES has allowed students with significant intellectual disabilities to build lifelong social relationships alongside peers without disabilities. Extending these evidence-based models downward to the Pre-K years is exactly the kind of policy decision that early childhood research has demanded for a generation.
What the $67.5 Million Actually Buys
The investment does more than open new classroom seats. According to the Mayor's Office and reporting from Chalkbeat, Gothamist, the Daily News, and CBS New York, the funding will:
• Add approximately 250 new specialized Pre-K seats across 26 schools in 14 community school districts, with the majority reserved for students with disabilities and located in neighborhoods with the highest concentrations of working-class and immigrant families;
• Hire hundreds of new special education staff, including psychologists, social workers, speech evaluators, and occupational therapists at the Preschool Regional Assessment Centers, to reduce chronic evaluation delays;
• Expand the Special Education Itinerant Teacher (SEIT) program, so that more preschoolers can receive specialized instruction alongside their non-disabled peers in inclusive settings;
• Increase bilingual evaluation capacity, so that families whose home language is not English can obtain evaluations in a language they and their children understand; and
• Strengthen family-facing supports throughout the IEP process, including navigation assistance for parents new to the CPSE system.
Each of these components addresses a specific, documented failure of the current preschool special education system. Taken together, they represent the most substantial preschool special education investment New York City has made in a generation.
An Advocacy Priority We Have Long Championed
Regina Skyer began her career in special education in 1973 — two years before the enactment of what is now the IDEA — and founded this firm in 1992 on the conviction that a Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE) is a civil right belonging to every child, at every age. In her January 2026 New Year's message to the special education community, Regina reaffirmed her professional commitments for the year ahead, including her pledge “to remain vocal, visible, and unwavering whenever policies or practices threaten the educational rights of children with learning, communication, or physical differences,” and “to assure that the right to a Free and Appropriate Public Education (FAPE) remains a civil right available to all children.”
Those commitments extend to our youngest clients. Preschool cases — CPSE-age children ages three to five — occupy a distinct and often overlooked corner of special education law. The stakes are enormous: early intervention and high-quality preschool instruction can meaningfully alter a child's developmental trajectory, and delays at this stage compound for years. Regina and this firm have long argued that the City must invest in preschool special education with the same seriousness it invests in school-age programming, and that a Pre-K system that excludes children with disabilities is not, and can never be called, “universal.”
Today's announcement echoes that argument in the plainest possible terms. As Mayor Mamdani put it at the press conference: “Universal has to mean exactly that, universal. Having a child with a disability or a special need should not be the exception to that rule.” We could not agree more.
What We Will Be Watching
Applause is warranted, but so is vigilance. An announcement is not a delivered service, and $67.5 million is a substantial down payment on a problem that has grown for decades. In the coming months, SkyerLaw will be watching closely to ensure that the promises made this week become realities in classrooms this fall. Specifically, we will be tracking:
• Whether the 250 new specialized Pre-K seats are actually staffed, opened on time, and filled through a transparent CPSE placement process, rather than through the ad hoc offers that too often characterize DOE seat allocation;
• Whether evaluation timelines at the Preschool Regional Assessment Centers meaningfully shorten, and whether the CPSE begins to consistently meet its statutory obligations for timely IEP development;
• Whether bilingual evaluations become genuinely available on demand, rather than a promised service that remains functionally out of reach for families;
• Whether the expansion reaches families in every borough equitably, including those in districts that have historically been underserved; and
• Whether the City continues to fund and grow this investment in future budget cycles, so that this expansion is not a one-time headline but the beginning of a durable shift in how New York City serves its youngest learners with disabilities.
We will also continue to advocate — in impartial hearings, in State Review Officer appeals, and in federal court where necessary — for the many preschoolers whose current IEPs are not being implemented and whose families have had no choice but to seek unilateral placements and public funding. This investment does not moot those cases. It vindicates them.
A Word to the Families We Serve
If your child is a preschooler with a disability, or is transitioning from Early Intervention to CPSE, this announcement matters to you. Beginning in the fall, more specialized program options will be available closer to home. If the CPSE tells you that your child cannot access a Nest, Horizon, AIMS, Path, or ACES Pre-K seat that would meet their needs, or if evaluation delays are preventing your child from receiving services, please reach out. The law entitles your child to a Free Appropriate Public Education from age three forward, and the City's new investment should make it easier — not harder — to secure that right.
We commend Mayor Mamdani, Chancellor Samuels, Deputy Chancellors Christina Foti and Simone Hawkins, the parent advocates who fought for years to get here, and the members of the City Council who prioritized this funding in the FY 2027 budget. This is what it looks like when the City takes its obligations to children with disabilities seriously. We look forward to the day when this level of investment is not the exception, but the expectation.
— The Law Offices of Regina Skyer & Associates, LLP
Sources
• Mayor's Office of the City of New York, “Mayor Mamdani and Chancellor Kamar Samuels Launch Major Expansion of Pre-K Special Education” (July 14, 2026).
• Cayla Bamberger, “Mamdani expands key autism school programs to pre-K amid universal childcare push,” New York Daily News (July 14, 2026).
• Jessica Gould, “Special education in NYC preschools gets a boost under Mayor Mamdani,” Gothamist (July 14, 2026).
• Nadra Nittle, “The nation's largest school system is expanding special education for its youngest learners,” Chalkbeat New York (July 14, 2026).
• Dave Carlin & Alexa Herrera, “NYC expands preschool special education with $67 million investment in programs,” CBS New York (July 14, 2026).
• Barbara Russo-Lennon, “NYC officials expand pre-K special education programs in time for new school year,” amNewYork (July 14, 2026).
• Regina Skyer, Letter to Chancellor Kamar H. Samuels, February 2026 SkyerLaw Newsletter (February 18, 2026).
• Regina Skyer, January 2026 New Year Newsletter, The Law Offices of Regina Skyer & Associates, LLP (January 2026).
