Mayor Eric Adams announced plans Wednesday to include $167 million for special education preschool seats and expanded 3-K seats in his proposed executive budget.

Adams was joined by former Mayor Bill de Blasio, whose administration's signature policy was the rollout of universal pre-K in the five boroughs. 

“You probably didn't notice when he walked in, but we are here with former mayor, Mayor de Blasio. You know, we cannot say enough. And part of being a mayor is to ask yourself, what is the legacy you're laying out for the future?” Adams said. 

“And you cannot talk about the legacy of Mayor de Blasio without talking about what he did around early childhood education. He just got it,” he added. “He understood that for far too long, we have been embracing the philosophy of pulling our young people out of the river downstream instead of preventing them from falling in the river of lack of educational opportunities upstream.”

De Blasio, for his part, praised Adams for prioritizing the issue.

“These are perilous times. And in these kind of times, we've got to make our priorities even sharper. We've got to really throw down and say this is what we're going to do no matter what,” he said. “And that's what Mayor Adams has done here today on behalf of our children.”

The funding is money the administration says will be baselined into the budget for the future and is promising to keep the city's Head Start seats open — even if there's a change in federal funding for the program.

“Making sure that we don't have to have this fight every single year, that it speaks to the commitments that Mayor Adams has made around early childhood investment. And so we're excited that these will be baselined and that we don't have to go through that every single year,” Schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos told NY1 in an exclusive interview.

The administration added $55 million to last year’s budget to open new special education preschool seats to help alleviate a longtime shortage. But that funding was not initially included in this year’s budget, causing advocates to sound the alarm that the classes may have to close not long after they opened. The same was true for $112 million in funding for expanded 3-K seats. 

“The Adams administration has remained committed to quality, affordable early childhood education. We said that any child who needs a seat is going to get a seat, and we're sticking with that promise,” Aviles-Ramos told NY1.

Still, as of last month, even with the new special education preschool seats, more than 600 students were waiting for a spot, according to a letter sent to the mayor last week by 80 advocacy organizations, calling on the mayor to include the $55 million, among other funding.

The education department says children are referred to the special education seats throughout the year, and ninety percent of them are placed in a seat within thirty days. 

The administration is also committing to fund the city’s Head Start seats — a federal program that provides year-round childcare to qualifying low-income New Yorkers.

The city was forced to re-apply for its Head Start funding this year, due to the results of an audit of the program and concerns about persistent under-enrollment means it may receive less funding than in the past. But Aviles-Ramos says City Hall has committed to funding the seats if federal funding decreases.

“Even if we don't get the funding, we have a commitment to make sure that the programs remain intact. And so that's, that's huge. There will be no disruption of care,” she said.

The city will find out more about how much Head Start funding it will receive this spring, and is also aiming to convert some seats into Early Head Start seats — serving younger children, which have seen higher demand.

The amount the city will spend on Head Start will depend on what it receives from the federal government.

The $127 million for preschool special education and 3-K seats isn’t all the funding some advocates have been urging the mayor to add into the budget. The Coalition for Equitable Education Funding had also called on the mayor to add and baseline $70 million to help serve students in general education preschool seats who have disabilities and need services like speech or occupational therapy.

As of last month, more than 7,900 preschoolers were waiting for at least one of their mandated services to begin for the school year, and more than half of them had received none of the services they were entitled to receive.

Aviles-Ramos says that’s a long-standing problem that the DOE’s new Division of Inclusive and Accessible Learning is working to address.

“These are the kinds of problems that we have to really pay attention to regardless of when they started,” she said. ”They are persistent issues that we need to solve for and one person can't solve them alone. So, very grateful to advocates who continue to work closely with us, as well as parent leaders and elected officials, and then our internal team. We're paying attention to this issue."