By MATT O’BRIEN

The two artificial intelligence startups behind rival chatbots ChatGPT and Claude are bracing for an existential showdown this year as both need to prove they can grow a business that will make more money than they’re losing.

The fiercest competition between the two AI developers, along with bigger companies like Google, is a race to win over corporate leaders looking to adopt AI tools to boost workplace productivity. The rivalry is also spilling into other realms, including the Super Bowl.

Anthropic is airing a pair of TV commercials during Sunday’s game that ridicule OpenAI for the digital advertising it’s beginning to place on free and cheaper versions of ChatGPT. While Anthropic has centered its revenue model on selling Claude to other businesses, OpenAI has opened the doors to ads as a way of making money from the hundreds of millions of consumers who get ChatGPT for free.

Anthropic’s commercials humorously mock the dangers of manipulative chatbots — represented as real people speaking in a stilted and unnaturally effusive tone — that form a relationship with a user before trying to hawk a product. The commercials end with a written message — “Ads are coming to AI. But not to Claude.” — followed by the opening beat and lyrics of the Dr. Dre song “What’s the Difference.”

FILE – The Anthropic website and mobile phone app are shown in this photo, in New York, July 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)

In a sign they struck a nerve, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a social media post that he laughed at the “funny” ads but blasted them as dishonest and threw shade at his competitor’s smaller customer base.

“Anthropic serves an expensive product to rich people,” Altman wrote on X. He also boasted that more Texans “use ChatGPT for free” than all the people in the United States who use Claude.

Chiming in to directly challenge Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei was OpenAI’s president and co-founder Greg Brockman, who questioned whether Anthropic was truly committing to never selling Claude “users’ attention or data to advertisers.” Amodei, who rarely posts on X, did not respond.

The rivalry has existed ever since Amodei and other OpenAI leaders quit the AI research laboratory and formed Anthropic in 2021, promising a clearer focus on the safety of the better-than-human technology called artificial general intelligence that both San Francisco firms wanted to build. That was before OpenAI first released ChatGPT in late 2022, revealing the huge commercial potential of large language models that could help write emails, homework or computer code.

The competition ramped up this week as both companies launched product updates. OpenAI on Thursday launched a new platform called Frontier, designed to be a one-stop shop for businesses adopting a variety of AI tools, including those not made by OpenAI, that can work in tandem, particularly AI agents that work autonomously as “AI co-workers” on someone’s behalf.

“We can be the partner of choice for AI transformation for enterprise. The sky is the limit in terms of revenue we can generate from a platform like that,” Fidji Simo, OpenAI’s CEO of applications, told reporters this week.

Anthropic earlier in the week jolted the stocks of legal-software companies with an update to its Cowork assistant that could help automate the work of drafting legal documents.

FILE – The OpenAI logo is displayed on a mobile phone in front of a computer screen with output from ChatGPT, March 21, 2023, in Boston. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer, File)

“Both OpenAI and Anthropic are really trying to position themselves as a platform company,” said Gartner analyst Arun Chandrasekaran. “The models are important, but the models aren’t a means to an end.”

The two startups aren’t just competing with each other. They also face competition from Google, which is both a leading developer of a powerful AI model, Gemini, and has its own cloud computing infrastructure backed by revenue from its legacy digital advertising business. They also have complicated relationships with Amazon, which is Anthropic’s primary cloud provider, and Microsoft, which holds a 27% stake in OpenAI.

The first choice for businesses looking to adopt AI agents is typically cloud computing “hyperscalers” like Microsoft, Google and Amazon, which offer a package of services, while AI model providers like Anthropic and OpenAI “tend to come in second place,” said Nancy Gohring, a senior research director at IDC.

But there’s an opening because none of the players are giving businesses what they want, which are stronger security and compliance assurances to enable the more widespread use of AI agents that can access corporate systems and data.

“Adopting AI and agents is inherently somewhat risky,” Gohring said.

There’s also the AI division of Elon Musk’s newly merged SpaceX and its chatbot, Grok, which is not yet a viable contender for business customers. Musk has long set his sights on challenging the market dominance of OpenAI, which he co-founded and is now suing in a court case set for trial in April.

SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic are among the world’s most valuable privately held firms and Wall Street investors expect any, or all of them, could become publicly traded within the next year or so. But unlike SpaceX, which has its rocket business to fall back on, or established tech giants — like Amazon, Google and Microsoft — both Anthropic and OpenAI must find a way to make enough from selling AI products to pay for the huge costs in computer chips and data centers to run their energy-hungry AI systems.

It’s not that Anthropic and OpenAI aren’t making money or growing their product lines. The private firms don’t publicly disclose sales but both have signaled they are making billions of dollars in revenue on their existing products, including paid chatbot subscriptions for individual users.

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But it costs a lot more money to fund the computing infrastructure needed to build these powerful AI models and respond to the millions of prompts they get each day. OpenAI, in particular, has said it owes more than $1 trillion in financial obligations to backers — including Oracle, Microsoft and Nvidia — that are essentially fronting the compute costs on the expectation of future payoffs.

For some, the wait will likely be worth it.

“Profitability matters, but not as a near‑term decision factor for investors who remain focused on scale, differentiation and infrastructure leverage,” said Forrester analyst Charlie Dai. “Both companies continue to post heavy losses, yet investors still back them because the frontier‑model race demands extraordinary capital intensity.”

Denise Dresser, OpenAI’s newly hired chief revenue officer, told reporters this week that the company’s priority is “building the best enterprise platform for all industries, all segments.”

“I don’t think we’re thinking about it from a revenue standpoint, but truly from a customer outcome standpoint,” she said, in part reflecting the “sense of urgency” she’s heard from CEOs who want a smoother way of applying AI.

“There’s a recognition that AI is becoming a core operating advantage,” Dresser said. “They don’t want to be on the wrong side of that shift.”

By The Associated Press

For much of two decades, police, FBI agents and prosecutors investigated allegations that Jeffrey Epstein sexually abused underage girls. Now, the Justice Department has released much of what they found to the public.

The millions of documents comprise the most detailed look yet at the inner workings of the multiple investigations into Epstein and his longtime confidant Ghislaine Maxwell.

Those documents include some of the earliest police reports taken by police in Palm Beach, Florida, as well as recordings of some of Epstein’s victims speaking on the phone and to investigators. And it includes internal Justice Department emails from as recently as a few months ago.

A document that was included in the U.S. Department of Justice release of the Jeffrey Epstein files, photographed Monday, Feb. 2, 2026, shows a diagram prepared by the FBI attempting to chart the network of Epstein’s victims and the timeline of their alleged abuse. (AP Photo/Jon Elswick)

Here is a timeline of the Epstein investigations and the efforts to open up the government’s files:

The investigation begins

March 2005: Palm Beach police begin investigating Epstein after the family of a 14-year-old girl reports she was molested at his mansion. Multiple underage girls, many of them high school students, would later tell police that Epstein hired them to give sexual massages.

May 2006: Police officials sign paperwork to charge Epstein with multiple counts of unlawful sex with a minor, but the county’s top prosecutor, State Attorney Barry Krischer, takes the unusual step of sending the case to a grand jury.

July 2006: Epstein is arrested after a grand jury indicts him on a count of soliciting prostitution. The relatively minor charge upsets Palm Beach police leaders, who publicly accuse Krischer of giving Epstein special treatment. The FBI begins an investigation.

2007: Federal prosecutors prepare an indictment, but for a year Epstein’s lawyers engage in talks with the U.S. attorney in Miami, Alexander Acosta, about a deal that would avoid federal prosecution. Epstein’s lawyers decry his accusers as unreliable.

Secret deal leads to a light jail term

June 2008: Epstein pleads guilty to state charges: one count of soliciting prostitution and one count of soliciting prostitution from someone under the age of 18. He is sentenced to 18 months in jail. Under a secret arrangement, the U.S. attorney’s office agrees not to prosecute Epstein for federal crimes. Epstein serves most of his sentence in a work-release program that allows him to leave jail during the day.

May 2009: One of Epstein’s accusers, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, files a lawsuit claiming Epstein and Maxwell arranged for her to have sexual encounters with “royalty, politicians, academicians, businessmen” and others. The lawsuit doesn’t name the men.

July 2009: Epstein is released from jail. For the next decade, Epstein’s accusers wage a legal fight to get his federal non-prosecution agreement voided.

News media and lawsuits keep public interest high

March 2, 2011: The Daily Mail publishes an interview with Giuffre in which she describes traveling with Epstein to London at age 17 and spending a night dancing with Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, then known as Prince Andrew. The story and a photo of the prince with his arm around Giuffre creates a crisis for the royal family. FBI agents subsequently interview Giuffre.

Dec. 30, 2014: Giuffre’s lawyers file court papers claiming she had sexual encounters with Mountbatten-Windsor and other men, including “foreign presidents, a well-known Prime Minister, and other world leaders.” All those men deny the allegations.

November 2018: The Miami Herald revisits the handling of Epstein’s case in a series of stories focusing partly on the role of Acosta — who by this point is President Donald Trump’s labor secretary. The coverage intensifies public interest in Epstein.

New York prosecutors revive case

Dec. 6, 2018: FBI agents and the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan begin a new investigation into Epstein.

July 6, 2019: Epstein is arrested on new sex trafficking charges brought by the prosecutors in New York, who have concluded they aren’t bound by the earlier non-prosecution agreement with Epstein in Florida. Days later, Acosta resigns as labor secretary.

Aug. 10, 2019: Epstein kills himself in his jail cell in New York.

July 2, 2020: Federal prosecutors in New York charge Maxwell with sex crimes, saying she helped recruit and abuse Epstein’s victims.

Dec. 30, 2021: After a monthlong trial, a jury convicts Maxwell of sex trafficking and other crimes.

June 28, 2022: Maxwell is sentenced to 20 years in prison.

January, 2024: Public interest in the Epstein case surges again after a judge makes more court records public in a related lawsuit.

A new president and a fresh political crisis

Jan. 20, 2025: Trump, who was friends and neighbors with Epstein for years, becomes president again. During his 2024 campaign, he had suggested that he’d seek to open more government files on Epstein.

February 2025: Attorney General Pam Bondi suggests in a Fox News Channel interview that an Epstein “client list” is sitting on her desk. The Justice Department distributes binders marked “declassified” to far-right influencers, but much of the information had long been public.

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April 25, 2025: Giuffre dies by suicide.

July 7, 2025: The Justice Department says Epstein didn’t maintain a “client list” and it won’t make any more files related to his sex trafficking investigation public.

July 15, 2025: Reps. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., and Thomas Massie, R-Ky., introduce the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which would force the Justice Department to make its investigative files on Epstein public.

July 17, 2025: The Wall Street Journal describes a sexually suggestive letter that the newspaper says bore Trump’s name and was included in a 2003 album for Epstein’s 50th birthday. Trump denies writing the letter and sues the newspaper.

July 24-25, 2025: In an effort to put a political crisis to rest, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche interviews Maxwell. She denies wrongdoing and says she never saw Trump involved in any sexually inappropriate activity. Afterward, she is moved from a low-security prison in Florida to a minimum-security prison camp in Texas.

A prince loses his royal title

Oct. 21, 2025: Giuffre’s posthumous memoir is published. In it, she revisits her claims that Epstein and Maxwell sexually trafficked her to powerful men, including Mountbatten-Windsor.

Oct. 30, 2025: King Charles III strips Mountbatten-Windsor of his remaining titles, meaning he can no longer be referred to as “prince,” and evicts him from his royal residence.

Nov. 12, 2025: A House committee releases a trove of email correspondence between Epstein and others, including Mountbatten-Windsor, Trump ally Steve Bannon, ex-Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman. In one 2019 email to a journalist, Epstein wrote that Trump “knew about the girls” but didn’t explain what he meant by that.

Nov. 14, 2025: At Trump’s urging, Bondi announces that the U.S. attorney in Manhattan will investigate Epstein’s ties to some of the Republican president’s political foes, including former President Bill Clinton, a Democrat; Summers; and Hoffman, a prominent Democratic donor. None of those men has been accused of misconduct by Epstein’s accusers.

Nov. 18, 2025: Congress passes the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Trump signs it into law the next day.

Dec. 19, 2025: The Justice Department begins releasing records. The batch includes snapshots that Epstein kept in his home of various famous people he met over the years, including Trump and Clinton. After releasing just a sliver of the available documents, though, the Justice Department halts disclosures, saying it needs more time to review the records.

Jan. 30, 2025.: The Justice Department begins releasing what Blanche says are more than 3 million pages of documents, 2,000 videos and 180,000 images. The files are posted to the department’s website.

Follow the AP’s coverage of Jeffrey Epstein at https://apnews.com/hub/jeffrey-epstein.

By DÁNICA COTO

SANTA CRUZ DEL NORTE, Cuba (AP) — The smell of sulfur hits hard in this coastal town that produces petroleum and is home to one of Cuba’s largest thermoelectric plants. Yet, even as the plant cranks back to life, residents remain in the dark, surrounded by energy sources they cannot use.

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As tensions deepen between Cuba and the U.S. after it attacked Venezuela and disrupted oil shipments, so have the woes of Santa Cruz del Norte.

People in this town east of Havana are plunged into darkness daily and forced to cook with coal and firewood, but not everyone can afford this new reality.

Kenia Montoya said she recently ripped the wooden door off her bathroom in the crumbling cinderblock home that she shares with her children because she needed firewood, and they needed to eat.

“Things are getting worse for us now,” she said. “They don’t supply us with petroleum. They don’t supply us with food. Where does that leave us, then?”

A faded purple sheet now hangs over their bathroom. Nearby, only a handful of coal remains in a small bag.

The 50-year-old mother doesn’t know how she’ll cook once the coal runs out because supplies in the region have dwindled.

It’s one of many uncertainties gripping towns like this one across Cuba after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to impose tariffs on any country that sells or provides oil to Cuba.

“Well, it’s a failed nation now,” Trump said this week. “And they’re not getting any money from Venezuela, and they’re not getting any money from anywhere.”

‘How are we going to live?’

Near the main entrance to Santa Cruz del Norte, a sprawling mural is emblazoned with the following message in all caps: “NO ONE GIVES UP HERE. LONG LIVE A FREE CUBA.”

But people wonder how long they can hold out.

The island’s crisis is deepening: severe blackouts, soaring prices and a shortage of basic goods.

Meanwhile, the Cuban government remains mum over its oil reserves, offering no word on whether Russia or anyone else would increase their shipments after oil supplies from Venezuela were disrupted when the U.S. attacked and arrested its president.

On Thursday, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel described the situation as “complex” as he called the U.S. stance “aggressive and criminal,” saying it’s affecting things like transportation, hospitals, schools, tourism and the production of food.

He said that in a week, he would provide details about how Cuba will deal with the crisis.

Cuban officials recently lauded a phone call they had with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, although they did not share details. Meanwhile, Mexico has pledged to send humanitarian aid, including food, after Trump said he asked that it suspend oil shipments to the island.

Many in Santa Cruz del Norte feel the worst is yet to come.

“With all those tariffs they’re going to impose on countries, no oil will come in, and how are we going to live?” said Gladys Delgado.

The 67-year-old had cracked open her front door on a recent chilly afternoon to get some fresh air as she sewed small, colorful rugs made of clothing scraps to make extra cash because her pension is only $6 a month.

A couple of houses down, Minorkys Hoyos dropped a handful of cassava cubes into an old pot she filled with water from a barrel and placed it over a tiny, makeshift grill inside her home.

“You live with what you have,” she said, noting she had no other food available at that moment.

The few rechargeable items that used to light her small, disheveled home have broken down, and she began to bump into things until a neighbor gifted her an improvised lantern made with fuel and a reused baby food jar.

“When it’s dark, I don’t see,” said the 53-year-old diabetic.

It was late afternoon as she cooked, but her home was already dark.

Outside, two children sat on a dusty sidewalk. They stacked dominoes one atop the other to see how high they could go before the whole thing tumbled down.

‘If only we could do something’

For the past three months, Santa Cruz del Norte had electricity while most of Cuba was hit with constant outages stemming from aging infrastructure and fuel shortages at power plants.

People like Iván Amores were wary of rejoicing, fearful they would be plunged into the dark again like most of last year. Their fears materialized a week ago, when the outages hit again.

“This used to be wonderful,” he recalled of his town when it had electricity. “Now, it’s truly torture.”

He uses a tiny, makeshift barbecue pit to cook for himself, his daughter and young granddaughter, buying pricier coal at $3 a bag because it generates less smoke inside their tidy home.

Amores also invested in a single tube light that a Cuban man in another town builds and sells; it can be charged and even comes with a USB port.

But even those kind of brilliant inventions Cubans are known for are out of reach for people like 67-year-old Mariela Viel; she and her husband still cannot afford to add a bathroom to their cinderblock home with a dirt floor.

Growing up, Viel said she never knew what a blackout was: “We were living well. We had food, money.”

She worked more than 40 years at the cafeteria of Cuba’s power company and now receives $8 a month in pension.

“What can I afford? Nothing. Not even a package of chicken,” she said.

When there’s power, she cooks rice and beans and listens to her favorite music: Cuban big bands.

Viel sat outside one recent afternoon, watching a couple neighbors walk briskly with buckets of warmed up water so their families could take showers during a cold snap that began in late January, with a record low of 32 degrees (0 degrees) recorded in a town southeast of Santa Cruz del Norte.

Celebrations also start earlier now, with one family organizing a boy’s 15th birthday — a milestone age across Latin America — mid-afternoon before he and his friends opted to finish partying outdoors under a big yellow moon.

It glowed on a group of people nearby who danced and sang outside next to a scooter blasting music from its speakers to celebrate the birthday of Olga Lilia Laurenti, now 61.

“I’m telling you, whatever’s meant to be, let it be, because we can’t stop it,” she said as she paused dancing.

“You’re not going to waste part of your life on something that’s out of your control. If only we could do something, but what are we going to do? We can’t suffer. You need laughter, you need joy.”

Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

By MAKIYA SEMINERA

SAN ANTONIO (AP) — Sandra Mosqueda watched with an amused smile as her 2-year-old son, Atreus, began sweeping the floor with a miniature mop.

Atreus is part of the inaugural class of infants and toddlers receiving free preschool in a citywide program in San Antonio, Texas. It’s something his mother doesn’t take for granted. As a child, she herself wasn’t able to start preschool this young. In the case of her two older boys — now in first grade and kindergarten — the free preschool set them up for success in elementary school.

The first five years of a child’s life are among the most critical for their development. Those years lay a foundation and prepare them for kindergarten, often setting them up for success throughout school and beyond. But immense disparities exist in whether parents across the country report their child as ready for kindergarten, new data from the National Survey for Children’s Health shows.

Nationally, nearly two-thirds of children were reported in the survey as on track for kindergarten, regardless of their families’ income. However, the gap in kindergarten readiness is substantial when comparing reports from the poorest families and the wealthiest — approximately a 20% difference.

Administered by the U.S. Census Bureau, the federal survey offers a glimpse into school readiness by collecting responses annually from thousands of parents and guardians on their children’s early learning, social-emotional development, self-regulation, motor development and health. The latest results were released in December.

Low-income children often have less access to experiences that boost school readiness, such as high-quality early learning opportunities. That isn’t to say those kids haven’t made gains. Over the past few years, the survey’s portion of on-track children from families earning less than the federal poverty line — just under $32,000 for a family of four in 2024 — has trended upward nationwide by a few percentage points.

Some city and state programs are working to boost that improvement by expanding preschool opportunities for children from low-income families. The mission is even more urgent as parents juggle soaring child care costs and a widening affordability gap.

San Antonio’s program, called Pre-K 4 SA, is a prime example. It’s designed to serve low-income and working-class families throughout the city, offering 2,000 preschool seats for 3- and 4-year-olds — 80% of them free to families who qualify. The program, which opened in 2013, is funded through the city’s sales tax and expanded last year to include four infant and toddler classrooms in its new South Education Center. The preschools also offer an unusually broad mix of services, in recognition that poverty raises a complex blend of obstacles to kindergarten readiness.

Citywide early childhood programs have also emerged in recent years in Denver, New York, Boston, and Chicago, among others.

Pre-K 4 SA teacher Deziree Arce, center, plays a game with her students, Oct. 9, 2025, in San Antonio. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

Students who have completed Pre-K 4 SA have scored higher than the state average on third grade math and reading, according to the Urban Education Institute at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Those outcomes contribute to what Sarah Baray, CEO of Pre-K 4 SA, views as a key success of the program: Children with the greatest needs receive the same quality education as kids from wealthier families.

“The quality is so high that even families who could afford to go anywhere try to get into our schools,” Baray said.

High-quality education as a solution for all families, regardless of income

Many experts agree that one of the best ways to boost school readiness is to ensure programs meet high-quality standards, such as smaller class sizes and child-to-staff ratios.

Pre-K 4 SA has implemented a “whole child” approach that develops a range of skills, including socioemotional learning. Baray said the program prepares children “not just (for) academic success, but life success.”

Kids in Deziree Arce’s class learn to count and recognize shapes just like other preschoolers. But the children also receive guidance from Arce on social-emotional skills to test out all day, whether it’s consoling a crying classmate or resolving a conflict on who sits where at their classroom table.

Pre-K 4 SA students play on the playground, Oct. 9, 2025, in San Antonio. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

“When I see kids that come from, like, where I came from, I’m giving them something that I never got,” said Arce, who grew up in a low-income family and has taught at Pre-K 4 SA for nine years.

Pre-K 4 SA also intentionally incorporates opportunities for children to refine their motor skills. For lunch, the children in Arce’s class pinched turkey burgers — provided by a local food bank — with tongs out of aluminum trays and onto their plates. Exploding ketchup packets were met with celebration, as some students opened them by themselves for the first time.

Outdoor play is another critical component to improving motor skills. Students spend an hour outside every day unless weather conditions are severe. In an era of much screen time and time indoors, Pre-K 4 SA students are encouraged to engage in “risky play.” That could mean racing tricycles around the perimeter of the playground, climbing up the slide or spraying water from a pump. Those experiences teach students their physical limits early, said Pre-K 4 SA Chief of Schools Tonda Brown.

Finding solutions to get families off the waitlist

A major challenge for San Antonio’s program, as well as in citywide efforts around the country, is meeting the demand.

More than 1,600 families were on Pre-K 4 SA’s waitlist this school year, Baray said. To help wait-listed families, the program’s enrollment team connects them with other local options, such as school district-run preschools or private centers partnered with Pre-K 4 SA.

Pre-K 4 SA students eat a provided lunch, Oct. 9, 2025, in San Antonio. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

Other cities distribute the demand across a wide variety of high-quality preschool programs by offering financial assistance to families.

Denver Preschool Program offers tuition credits to all families with 4-year-olds. Selected families can then put that money toward any licensed public or private preschool participating in the sales tax-funded program, said Priscilla Hopkins, executive director of Denver Public Schools’ early education office. About 80% of DPP’s providers were rated four- or five-star in Colorado’s quality rating system, according to the program’s 2024 impact report.

The level of financial support given to a family is determined by income. In 2024, nearly 1,800 4-year-olds who received DPP’s tuition support were in the lowest income tier — up to 135% of the federal poverty line. More than $21 million in tuition credits were dispersed in the 2023-2024 school year, according to program leaders.

Sandra Mosqueda and her 2-year-old son make a visit to Pre-K 4 SA, Oct. 9, 2025, in San Antonio. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

However, in large swathes of the country, especially rural areas, private preschools are the only high-quality option but often come with a hefty price tag and little financial assistance. That leaves low-income families with fewer preschool options than their wealthier peers, said Kelly Purtell, a human development and family science professor at Ohio State University.

“There’s all sorts of challenges that then really limit what preschools are even kind of on the table for them,” Purtell said.

Helping families outside the classroom, too

Reliable transportation can be another obstacle for low-income families, especially for parents who work outside normal business hours, Purtell said.

Pre-K 4 SA students arrive to catch the school bus, Oct. 9, 2025, in San Antonio. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

Pre-K 4 SA’s South Education Center offers free bus transportation to fill that gap.

As children boarded the bus at a designated pickup spot near Southside Lions Park, cheerful bus monitors greeted them and strapped each one into their seat with a safety harness. Their bus driver offered each child a cartoon sticker for their school-provided backpacks.

The stress of poverty can hinder a parent’s ability to give their child enriching experiences key to school readiness, which is why services that promote family stability are important, said Katie Paschall, a researcher at Child Trends. At Pre-K 4 SA, that means healthy cooking classes, mobile vaccination clinics and even “family cafes” where parents can get help from staff to apply for jobs. By eliminating those at-home issues, parents can focus more on setting their children up for a better future.

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In Mosqueda’s case, having her kids in preschool allowed her to return to school after Atreus’ birth halted her studies to become a respiratory therapist. She completed a dental assistant degree and got a job at a nearby dental office. No one has cheered on Mosqueda more than her boys — her oldest son proudly took videos of his mom at her graduation last year.

“It’s showing them you can still do anything, no matter what comes in your way, and having the help to do it makes it possible,” she said.

Data journalist Todd Feathers contributed reporting.

The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.