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Good morning!

Makiya Seminera, one of your Chalkbeat Chicago reporters, here to kick off your Wednesday. In my little corner of the world, I’ve been (sorta) celebrating a recent achievement: completing my first 1,000-piece puzzle…almost. I discovered at the end that I’m missing four pieces, and I’m not sure how I lost them — although I have a concerning suspicion that my dog could have played a role. Anyway, I’ll be trying to see if I can get replacement pieces from the puzzle company, because I really want to hang this puzzle on my wall!

Luckily for me, my puzzle is just a bunch of cartoon seagulls hanging out at the beach. In New York City, there’s a much more important puzzle to piece together: how to roll out Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s ambitious childcare agenda successfully.

At the helm of that mission is a newly appointed deputy chancellor to oversee the city’s early childhood education, my Chalkbeat New York colleague Michael Elsen-Rooney reports. The new leader, Erica Phillips, will have the enormous responsibility of implementing Mamdani’s free childcare plan for the city’s 2-year-olds, while also resolving issues related to funding delays for childcare providers.

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