1
PS 321 William Penn
Brooklyn·Kings County·Grades PK-5·~1,250 students
Co-ed
TuitionFree
TypePublic
Students~1,250
NYC
Best Pre-K Schools in NYC tuition-free
Independent rankings of Pre-K schools in NYC, built from director interviews and verified data — never from school payments.
14 schools indexed0 director-verifiedUpdated this week
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Looking for the best pre-k schools in NYC? We track 14 K-12 options that serve pre-k grades. All schools on this page are tuition-free charter campuses. Brooklyn has the highest concentration with 6 schools, followed by New York (3).
Admissions processes vary by school. AdmitCompass surfaces the deadlines, test requirements, and tuition for each campus on its detail page, so families can build a balanced reach / target / safety list. Every school is re-verified through direct outreach to admissions teams; data is refreshed on a 180-day cadence and timestamped on each profile.
See also: Under $20K/yr, Scholarship-friendly.
Showing 10 of 14 NYC schools
- 2Hunter College High School
New York·New York County·Grades 7-12·~1,200 students
Co-edTuitionFreeTypePublicStudents~1,200 - 3MS 51 William Alexander
Brooklyn·Kings County·Grades 6-8·~1,100 students
Co-edTuitionFreeTypePublicStudents~1,100 - 4Russell Sage Junior High School (JHS 190)
Forest Hills·Queens County·Grades 6-8·~1,100 students
Co-edTuitionFreeTypePublicStudents~1,100 - 5PS 122 Mamie Fay
Astoria·Queens County·Grades PK-8·~1,100 students
Co-edTuitionFreeTypePublicStudents~1,100 - 6Success Academy Williamsburg
Brooklyn·Kings County·Grades K-8·~850 students
Co-edTuitionFreeTypeCharterStudents~850 - 7PS 58 The Carroll School
Brooklyn·Kings County·Grades PK-5·~820 students
Co-edTuitionFreeTypePublicStudents~820 - 8PS 8 Robert Fulton
Brooklyn·Kings County·Grades PK-5·~670 students
Co-edTuitionFreeTypePublicStudents~670 - 9PS 76 William Hallet
Long Island City·Queens County·Grades PK-5·~660 students
Co-edTuitionFreeTypePublicStudents~660 - 10PS 17 Henry David Thoreau
Astoria·Queens County·Grades PK-5·~580 students
Co-edTuitionFreeTypePublicStudents~580
How we rank these schools
Built relationships, not scrapers. AdmitCompass ranks schools using a composite score that blends four signals: enrollment size (a proxy for stability and program breadth), tuition reasonableness within the local market, freshness of our most recent verification, and a small bonus for schools with full admissions detail published on their profile.
Public data comes from the Florida Department of Education (FLDOE), the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), and each school's own admissions pages. The information that actually matters to most families — acceptance rates, deadlines, what a director cares about — comes from direct interviews with school directors and admissions coaches across our active markets.
We do not publish scoring weights or per-axis thresholds. That keeps the moat intact: the rankings reflect actual conversations with people inside schools, not a formula anyone with a crawler could clone. Every profile is re-verified on a 180-day cadence, and the "last updated" date is timestamped on every school page.
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Frequently asked questions
Are these schools tuition-free?
Yes. Every school on this page is publicly funded — either a charter or a tuition-free public-school-of-choice option. Families pay no tuition; standard public-school district enrollment rules and lottery procedures apply.
How competitive is admission in NYC?
Admissions selectivity ranges from open-enrollment (most charters and parish schools) to highly selective (top independent K-12 programs). Each school's profile page lists deadlines, test requirements, and any published acceptance rate.
What's the smallest and largest school on this list?
Hellenic Classical Charter School - Queens is the smallest with 280 students; PS 321 William Penn is the largest at 1250. Smaller schools tend to offer more direct teacher contact and tighter community; larger schools usually have more elective and extracurricular breadth.
Is this list updated?
Yes. We re-verify school data on a 180-day cadence through direct contact with admissions teams, plus cross-checks against FLDOE, NCES, and published school sources. Each school profile shows the date of its most recent verification.
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