Brian Lera on WNYC.

So today is a big day for New York City families with kids in eighth grade.

This is the day that many of them are finding out the results of their high school applications.

And this is a big moment for New York City parents with kids too young to even go to school yet

because Mayor Adams is proposing cuts to the signature accomplishment of his predecessor, Bill de Blasio,

the creation of a universal pre-K system for four-year-olds and the start of

universal 3K for the year before that. This could even have implications for Mayor Adams'

re-election next year, and WNYC Education reporter Jessica Gould has been reporting on this

political battle and personal uncertainty and joins us now. Hi, Jess. Welcome back to the show.

Hey, Brian. As a starting point, how universal has universal pre-K become? So pre-K, which, you know,

in the, when you talk about this a lot, there's pre-K, which is 4K, and then 3K, right? And so 4K has been generally universal.

That was a de Blasio initiative.

They reached that goal, meaning that pretty much everybody who wants a seat can have one.

With the exception of, and advocates are very careful to point this out, there have never been enough special

education preschool seats for students with disabilities. So they have been underserved. But overall,

that was a goal under de Blasio, and that was seen as a milestone that was reached. And then they

were in the process of trying to get to the same place with 3K.

And they had created a situation where they said that, you know,

in half of the city's school districts, there was a seat for every kid who wanted one in 3K.

The problem is, and they wanted to get to all school districts,

just like universal pre-K for four-year-olds.

But they planned that based on a lot of federal stimulus funds. And that money is drying up. And on top of that, Mayor Adams has proposed

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