On a sunny afternoon in April, I sat on a bench at New York’s City Hall, waiting to interview Mayor Bill de Blasio. He breezed by in shirtsleeves, surrounded by grim-looking advisers. The mayor, too, was frowning.
That morning’s papers carried the news that de Blasio’s fundraising activities were being investigated by U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, the Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance, and a state commission on public ethics. The mayor’s new initiative to combat homelessness was being drowned out by media coverage of the investigations. De Blasio had gathered his team at City Hall and given them a pep talk, asking them to stay focused. He reminded the staff of their victories: Ending stop and frisk. Convincing a reluctant city council to pass an affordable housing plan. Shootings were at a historic low.
And then there was Pre-K For All, arguably first among de Blasio’s accomplishments. When he came into office in 2014, there were 20,000 free, full-day pre-K seats in New York City. Today, that number is 70,000. At a time of gridlock in Washington, de Blasio has quickly created a new entitlement in the nation’s largest city: an extension of the K-12 school system into an additional year of free, academically rigorous public education and childcare. It is available to every New York 4-year-old, whether their parents are living in a homeless shelter or working at a hedge fund. The program is so popular that suburban legislators have demanded state funding to provide their constituents with the same benefit.
[For more of this story, written by Dana Goldstein, go to http://www.citylab.com/politic...re-k-crusade/499010/]
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