The nation’s largest school system is expanding special education for its youngest learners

New York City Public Schools is bringing specialized special education programs to preschoolers for the first time. The nation's largest school system announced a sixty-seven point five million dollar investment Tuesday to expand autism-focused instruction, emotional disability support, and adapted academics to three- to five-year-olds across fourteen of the city's thirty-two districts. The expansion requires hundreds of new hires — psychologists, therapists, and speech evaluators — to accelerate evaluations and guide families through the process, The 19th reports. Starting this fall, the programs are concentrated in neighborhoods with high working-class and immigrant populations, as Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels aim to bring specialized education closer to home.

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