EXCERPT FROM: NY Daily News
By Michael McLaughlin and Ben Chapman
When school starts next week, a record number of kids will find they've been squeezed out of some of Brooklyn's most crowded and popular pre-K programs.
Experts said scores of families with young children continue to move to the neighborhoods as many are staying put even after having a second or third child.
Schools don't have space to add pre-K seats for the additional kids - and the bad economy is driving parents away from pricey private programs that run up to $26,000 a year.
"It's a perfect storm for prekindergarten," said Joyce Szuflita of NYC School Help. "There are more kids than ever, but not enough seats."
This year, parents filed 6,568 applications for 1,097 pre-K seats in District 15, which includes Park Slope, Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill and Boerum Hill. Last year, there were 5,528 applicants for 1,133 spots.
It adds up to bad news for many Brownstone parents like freelance writer Lisa Collins.
"We moved to Cobble Hill specifically because of PS 29," said Collins, whose 4-year-old daughter, Scarlet, was turned away from pre-K at the Henry St. school after the family relocated from Detroit.
For families that didn't get a pre-K spot, scraping together the hefty funds for private nursery school means cutting back on the household budget in a big way.
"We won't go on vacation this year and we didn't go on vacation this past year," said Connor O'Flynn, a television editor from Windsor Terrace, whose daughter didn't get into the pre-K program at Public School 154 on 11th Ave., where there were 215 applicants for 18 seats. Instead, O'Flynn is shelling out $10,000 for a three-day-a week private program.
The most popular schools admitted just a fraction of pre-K kids at the same time there were dramatic increases in the number of applicants: PS 321 in Park Slope had space for just 12 of 475 applicants this year; last school year there were 292 applicants for 48 slots. At PS 39 on Sixth Ave., there were 406 applicants for 36 slots this school year; last year 236 kids applied.