Photo by: Brooke Rosenberg

Brightside Academy, whose Intervale Avenue site in the Bronx is pictured here, plans to open five new locations before EarlyLearn begins in October.

After waking up from an afternoon nap, a class full of four-year-old children enrolled in the universal pre-kindergarten program at Brightside Academy’s Intervale Avenue location in the Bronx briskly stacked their bright blue sleeping mats in anticipation of playtime. Most of the children then devoted the next hour to building with wooden blocks and toy cars or playing an educational game on the classroom iPad.

The families and administration at this center seem to have few worries about the fate of the agency’s childcare program for the coming year. All of the organization’s New York locations have been awarded contracts under the Administration for Children’s Services’ new program EarlyLearn NYC beginning this October.

But other families across the five boroughs are now searching for new day care providers after theirs were denied Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) contracts. Some agencies might have to close down due to a lack of funding.