Private School Shortage Hits Manhattan

A long-dreaded private school supply shortage may have finally hit Manhattan.

Concerns that too many families are applying for a scarce number of kindergarten spots come every year — and then usually pass by February as most children find places. This time around, the anxiety may be warranted, school leaders said.

With decisions looming for next year's kindergarten classes, placements that often determine the location of a child's academic career, several schools are reporting historic rises in applications, as many as double the number they received last year. Overwhelmed, some schools have already shut their admissions processes, turning away families who handed in applications weeks before the ordinary deadline, December 1. The Dwight School on the Upper West Side announced its changed deadline, to October 19, on its Web site with one week's notice; Calhoun, which accepts only a set number of applications each year, reached the maximum days after applications became available, forcing admissions to close two weeks earlier than last year.

The result, observers said, is a stock of distraught parents who now face a dwindling list of schools where their 4-year-olds might be considered. "Every day a parent comes in here and says, 'I can't get an interview at —; I was closed out at —,'" the director of the Epiphany Community Nursery School on the Upper East Side, Wendy Levey, said. She declined to mention school names because she said she did not want to hurt her families' chances of getting in. She said the number of parents at her nursery school who have been shut out is in the dozens.

Emily Glickman, the president of a private firm that helps families apply to kindergartens, Abacus Guide Educational Consulting, called the early shutouts, reported to her by parents in frantic phone messages, unprecedented. "I've been doing this since 1999. I've never gotten messages like this year," Ms. Glickman said.

Outright panic is probably not warranted. Several schools are reporting big increases in the number of applications they receive, but interest is stable at other schools.

Hewitt, the girls' school on the Upper East Side, received 30% more applications this year than last, and the new Claremont Preparatory Academy in Lower Manhattan and its sister nursery schools have received double the number of applications they did last year, school leaders said.

The Buckley School closed its admissions process in mid-October after reaching its cap number of applications, but that schedule is consistent with the past several years, its director of admissions, JoAnn Lynch, said.

An increase in the number of applications handed in earlier in the year does not necessarily mean increased competition. Panic can breed panic, creating an illusion of heightened competition as nervous families send in more applications per child and rush to send them in earlier, Cynthia Bing of the Parents League, a resource group for parents at independent schools, said.

Indeed, nursery school directors have been recommending that families apply to more schools, closer to 10 versus five or six several years ago, and families are following suit. They have also been telling families to hand in applications as early as possible — "the minute you get the application," Ms. Levey advises. Some parents, she said, fill out the applications at night and then hand-deliver them the next morning.

That does not mean a crisis, Ms. Bing said. "We're not hearing an uproar in the streets yet," she said. "And the good news is — frankly, as it has been in the past — everyone has a place."

Yet a chicken-and-egg puzzle persists: Although some scorn advice that could fan hysteria, Ms. Levey and her peers said they are merely being practical.

Supply and demand estimations calculated by a coalition of admissions officers, the Independent Schools Admission Association of Greater New York, suggest that 300 more students wanted kindergarten seats last year than the independent schools had places to offer. About 2,700 4-year-olds took the Educational Resource Board tests required for entry at most schools, and the schools offered an estimated 2,400 spots, Isaagny's chairman, George Davison, said.

Mr. Davison, who also heads the Grace Church School in Lower Manhattan, said that increased wealth in Manhattan and more families staying in the city — there were more than 30% more children under 5 in Manhattan in 2005 than 2000, census figures show — lead him to believe the gap will widen. "I wouldn't be surprised this year if we saw it being 2,900 kids taking the ERB, and then all of a sudden you get a bit more of an issue," he said.

One solution, he said, is building new schools, as entrepreneurs such as Michael Koffler, the CEO of a private company that opened Claremont in 2005 and runs several nursery schools, have already begun to do.

Consultants and school leaders said another way to calm parents is to change the admissions process. Admissions directors are reconsidering an old idea of making the kindergarten process more like admission to medical school, with students and schools simply listing their top choices for more efficient sorting, Ms. Lynch at the Buckley School said.

Ms. Glickman said her preference is a lottery that would sort children automatically — eliminating measures such as play observations, applications, and parent interviews, which she called a "farce." "If you remember that the whole point of this is that they're ranking and sorting 4-year-olds openly — and secretly judging parents' wealth connections and likeliness to give — it really becomes apparent what a disgusting process this is," she said.

Reminded that an end to the traditional application process could hurt her professionally, Ms. Glickman maintained the position. "I also have a conscious," she said.