NEW YORK (AP) — With the school year less than two weeks away, New York City is racing to complete an unprecedented prekindergarten expansion — and its success or failure could have major political implications for its first-year mayor, Bill de Blasio.

De Blasio made the establishment of universal prekindergarten — which a top aide called one of the biggest government undertakings in the city’s history — the centerpiece of his mayoral campaign a year ago. It took months of political dealing to obtain the hundreds of millions of dollars needed for the program, but implementing it might be a greater challenge.