Allocation of pre-kindergarten seats in New York City

We consider the problem of identifying locations in New York City that are currently underserved with respect to access to pre-Kindergarten programs. We use two public datasets; the spatial distribution of four-year-olds, and the distribution and seating capacities of pre-Kindergarten programs in public schools and community based organizations. We implement a random allocation algorithm to identify and map underserved locations, then see how these locations change as capacity is added in a random fashion. Our model incorporates travel distance, and we measure the sensitivity of our results to variations in this parameter. We provide evidence that as the pre-Kindergarten capacity in our model increases, the effectiveness of this capacity as measured by the number of unused seats decreases, to the extent that when the total capacity in the city equals the number of children, almost 20,000 seats remain unused. The implementation of a “Universal” full day preKindergarten program has become an important topic in New York City and is a central concern of Mayor Bill De Blasio’s administration. Universal pre-Kindergarten (pre-K) means that every four-year-old child should have free access to 180 full days of instruction, centered around state pre-K standards. Studies have shown numerous benefits from preK instruction, including increased cognitive abilities, higher test scores in the short term, and access to higher paying jobs in the long term (Heuvel 2013). Besides ongoing debates on the financing of Universal pre-K in New York, there is a shortage of pre-K slots to accommodate every applicant. There is also no clear guideline to assess the need for preK programs in different school districts and neighborhoods so as to most effectively add new slots. The purpose of this paper is to use publicly available data to model the underserved regions of New York City with regards to pre-K accessibility. We display our results visually and examine the effects of changing model parameters to simulate additional capacity and variable travel distance. Finally, we discuss alternative approaches and extensions to our model. Currently, public pre-K programs in New York City are offered in public schools and community based organizations (CBOs). Programs are half day (two hours and 30 minutes of instruction) or full day (six hours and 20 minutes Copyright c © 2014, Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (www.aaai.org). All rights reserved. of instruction). Application processes differ for programs in public schools versus those in CBOs; whereas admission to CBO programs is first come, first served, admission to public school programs considers all applications submitted before the deadline and decides placement based on a list of Admissions Priorities. We now present the existing figures on pre-K demand and capacity as given by the Mayor’s Office, NYC Department of Education (DOE), and others (“Office of the Mayor” 2014). • 73,250 children require access to full day preKindergarten programs. This number is derived by taking the 81,748 children enrolled in Kindergarten and subtracting the estimated 8498 children who will enroll in private full day pre-K programs. As explained below, this figure is substantially different than the estimated population of 105,000 four-year-olds in New York City based on census data. • 58, 528 pre-K seats are currently available. This includes 26,364 half day seats and 32,164 full day seats. Of all currently available seats, 23,671 are in public schools and 34,857 are in CBOs, although the full day seats are almost evenly distributed between public schools and CBOs. • hence, roughly 41,000 full day seats need to be added. The planned implementation of Universal pre-K will occur over a two year period. • in the 2014-2015 school year, 23,640 full day seats will be added, split almost evenly between half day conversions and new seats. • in the 2015-2016 school year, 17,446 full day seats will be added, with the vast majority being half day conversions. There are ongoing discussions about where new full day seats can be located. The administration of NYC is searching for space not only in existing public schools and CBOs, but also in other city-owned buildings. There are independent discussions of implementation details such as teacher training, program standardization and support for speakers of English as a second language and students with disabilities. We seek to contribute to the question of where new seats should be located by determining which locations in the city have low pre-K accessibility, using only public data on population and existing capacity. Semantic Cities: Beyond Open Data to Models, Standards and Reasoning: Papers from the AAAI-14 Workshop