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New York Daily News: 3,100 Kindergarteners Waitlisted at Local Schools; Up By 1,000 From Last Year
By Meredith Kolodner March 31, 2011 Original available here More than 3,100 kindergartners have been waitlisted at their local schools - almost 1,000 more than last year, new data released by the city Wednesday shows. The biggest overcrowding problem is once again in Corona, Queens, but the upper East Side, West Side and downtown sections of Manhattan, as well as Brownstone Brooklyn, are also swimming in displaced kids. "We were completely blindsided," said Jennifer Barrett, mom of Zachary, 4, who is number 43 of 48 kindergartners waitlisted at Public School 107 in Park Slope, Brooklyn. "What's very frustrating is that we moved to this neighborhood and scraped our money together for this school." While some waitlists shrink as families get accepted into charter schools or gifted and talented programs, others - especially in parts of the Bronx and Queens - tend to grow as parents register closer to the start of school in September. "We understand parents are anxious, but this is only the beginning of the admissions process and every single year we see waitlists shrink or disappear completely throughout the spring and summer," said Education Department spokesman Jack Zarin-Rosenfeld. About 2,600 of the students waitlisted live in their local school zone, and the remaining roughly 550 live out of zone but have siblings at the schools where they applied. Close to 650 of the waitlisted students are in downtown Manhattan and the upper East Side, where the Education Department cut 2,200 new seats it was planning to add in its most recent capital plan. "The [Department of Education] is responsible for making sure there are enough seats in the local schools - that is their reason for being," said Councilwoman Jessica Lappin, who represents the upper East Side. "They definitely should have seen this coming." |
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