Apr 17, 2009 7:09 pm US/Eastern
NYC Kindergarten Crunch Overcrowding Schools
NEW YORK (CBS) ―
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NYC Department Of Education
There are classroom concerns in New York City, as a kindergarten crunch has the city struggling to find room for thousands of kids.
"It's incredibly troubling, you know, when you think of your little tiny child getting lost and left behind," mother Jenny Sullivan says.
Instead of being excited, Sullivan is worried about sending her daughter, Kate, off to Kindergarten at P.S. 3 in Manhattan next year.
"It's obviously overcrowding and not enough attention in the pivotal year of kindergarten, when they learn to read and write," Sullivan says. "Everyone knows what an important year kindergarten is."
In an effort to balance their budget, New York City's Administration for Children's Services is planning to close all the kindergarten classrooms in their daycare centers.
That will send more than 3,000 children to public school kindergartens, including many that already have waiting lists like P.S. 234.
"If there's gonna be more kindergartens closed, it's definitely going to be more crowded in my son's school or in other schools," parent Muhammad Huq says.
The Department of Education says many schools will have more students than last year, but that some schools won't be affected, and no kindergarten class will have more than 25 students – the contractual maximum.
But that class size goes against a state-mandated class-reduction plan that calls for no more than 20 students in a kindergarten class.
"If you care about education, if you care about equity, you've got to reduce class sizes," Leonie Haimson, of Class Size Matters, says. "You cannot simply go on increasing class size and expect that our kids are going to succeed."
The DOE says additional kindergarten spots will open this spring because they expect some students to enroll in non-public schools and gifted programs next year.
Every student who applied for kindergarten will be place by the end of June.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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