Big Kindergarten Wait List Limits City’s Pre-K Slots

Published: June 10, 2011 

By Fernanda Santos

There were more applications for children to enter prekindergarten classes in New York City this year than last, but a smaller proportion of them ended up getting in: 68 percent, down from 72 percent.
The increased number of applications — 28,815, compared with 25,487 last year — and long waiting lists for kindergarten led to the higher rejection rate, as crowded schools across the city cut pre-K classes to make room for the older children, portending a potential crisis in early-education services, which have suffered repeated budget cuts in recent years.

Some principals were told they would have to get rid of a prekindergarten class weeks ago. Others found out the day before the letters were sent. Many are worried about running out of space in school buildings that are at or near capacity: a kindergarten class has up to 25 children, 7 more than are allowed in pre-K.

“Either we don’t take any kindergarten students in 2012, which is probably not an option, or I won’t have room for my incoming fourth graders that year,” said Cecilia Jackson, principal of Pioneer Academy in Corona, Queens, an elementary school that has been phasing in a grade a year since opening in 2008.

The city ordered Pioneer, which had the second-largest kindergarten waiting list in the city, to give up one of its two full-day prekindergarten classes and replace it with two more kindergarten classes in the fall. Public School 107 in Park Slope, Brooklyn, whose building is so crowded there is no auditorium or gym, will trade its only prekindergarten class for more kindergartners. 

Students who were not matched can have applications submitted again during the summer for seats that might be vacant or created if the city and the state provide more money for the program.

“This is by no means the last chance,” said Matthew Mittenthal, a spokesman for the Education Department.

The space crunch stems partly from the cuts endured in recent years by the Education Department and the city’s Administration for Children’s Services, which offer prekindergarten services at day care centers.

In 2007, the city got an additional $61 million from the state to pay for two and a half hours daily of prekindergarten services for all 4-year-olds enrolled in children’s services programs. But when the economy foundered in 2008, the city cut its funding to day care centers that provided prekindergarten programs, eliminating about 300 seats.

The next year, children’s services stopped offering kindergarten for some 5-year-olds as a way to save money, sending 3,000 of them into the public school system, helping drive up average class sizes, according to an analysis by the city-financed Independent Budget Office.


Some 60 percent of prekindergarten services in New York are offered outside the public schools, including community-based organizations that receive public subsidies. Betty Holcomb, policy director at the Center for Children’s Initiatives, an advocacy organization, said it enrolled about 36,000 children in the current year in its prekindergarten classes.

Ms. Holcomb said if the budget proposed by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg last month remained unchanged, 200 more classrooms in day care centers, including many that offer prekindergarten services to 4-year-olds, will be affected.

“We’re just shrinking capacity, and as a result, parents are being closed out everywhere they turn,” Ms. Holcomb said.