Mayor Zohran Mamdani's signature NYC 2-K child care program will be full day and year round

Cayla Bamberger, New York Daily News on Apr 9, 2026

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NEW YORK — As New York City prepares to launch free child care for 2-year-olds, Mayor Zohran Mamdani plans to open most of the first 2,000 seats in the initiative, known as “2-K,” in programs that operate on a full-day year-round schedule, he’s set to announce Thursday in Brooklyn.

The extended days and hours are meant to ease the burden of child care on working parents who face a dilemma when pick-up is in the middle of the afternoon, forcing them to leave work early.

“For many families working nine to five, an eight to three program isn’t going to cut it,” Mamdani said in a statement. “For too long, parents have been forced to choose between their livelihood and their children, or to drain their savings just to make it through the workday. That ends now.”

“Universal child care must meet the real lives of working people. That begins with year-round, full-day 2-K.”

Some current programs provide after-school for a fee. But even then, the cost of extended hours can be so high, and the schedule so impractical, that parents are forced to turn down the city’s offer.

The traditional school schedule also leaves families without child care during summer break, requiring them to patch together various camps and enrichment activities while prices for such services continue to skyrocket.

Thursday’s announcement comes as public schools are closed this week for spring recess, leaving many parents having to balance child care responsibilities with their work schedules.

The earliest cohort of 2-K programs will open this fall in five local school districts, with plans to expand citywide by the end of Mamdani’s first term. Gov. Hochul gave Mamdani $73 million in state funding for 2-K’s first year, which a spokesperson for the mayor said would fully cover the costs associated with making the initial seats full-day and year-round.

In practice, the extended schedule will mean that most free 2-K programs will run from 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. for 260 days per year — for no extra fee to parents. The traditional school calendar is 180 school days.

There are some providers operating on extended schedules already, but most programs have historically been needs-based, with parents needing to jump through hoops to prove their eligibility. More recently, the city has experimented with a small number of full-day, year-round programs, without income restrictions.

But without widespread availability of such programs, parents have been forced to navigate a patchwork of child care — paying for after-school, hiring babysitters, or relying on family members to fill the gap. Some parents, disproportionately women, have found it made more financial sense for them to leave the workforce entirely.

The mayor’s spokesperson said the limited number of seats that will follow a traditional schedule is still being finalized. The city has started notifying child care providers that already have contracts if they were selected for new seats; additional programs are expected to find out if they were chosen soon.

“This is a historic moment,” said Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels, adding that he and Mamdani were building a child care system “tailored around the real needs of the families we serve.”