The Hechinger Report – Lillian Mongeau
“There are, New York City public school principal Kristina Beecher discovered, an awful lot of types of play blocks. There are wooden blocks, cardboard blocks, magnetic blocks, clear plastic blocks, number blocks, letter blocks, and fish-shaped blocks, to name a few. And all of them are advertised as the best possible blocks for outfitting a preschool classroom. Such choices have been faced by principals like Beecher across the city in the last two years as New York has moved to accommodate all of the city’s public school 4-year-olds in high quality preschool classrooms. Between the 2013-14 school year and the 2015-16 school year, the city converted thousands of preschool seats from half-day to full-day and also added thousands of brand new seats for a total new enrollment of 49,360 full-day seats.* They also added 2,000 teachers.”(more)