New anger over pre-K applications
BY RACHEL MONAHAN DAILY NEWS WRITER

Middle-class parents in Park Slope and Williamsburg have been outraged by the city's prekindergarten application mixups - but the new system may have posed a problem for poorer residents, too.
Bedford-Stuyvesant's Public School 3 has space for 54 prekindergarten students for next fall, but parents didn't know about the new application rules - so only 18 slots were filled.
"It seems like such a daunting task, when [last year] it was so easy - just go to your neighborhood school and sign up," said PS 3 literacy coach Lisa North.
"In a place like Bed-Stuy, people move around a lot. They live with other people. I'm sure our parents never got [notice]." This year, parents were required to send in an application by April 18 - and then go to schools to register if their children were admitted.
When Violet Lord went to the Jefferson Ave. school to try to register her granddaughter, Aliyah, 3, last week, she discovered she'd missed the deadline. Lord and her daughter hadn't received any information about the new application process, she said. When Violet Lord went to the Jefferson Ave. school to try to register her granddaughter, Aliyah, 3, last week, she discovered she'd missed the deadline. Lord and her daughter hadn't received any information about the new application process, she said.
"It wasn't advertised. It wasn't announced properly," she said. "I thought I was early."
City Education Department spokesman Andy Jacob said parents can apply for the open spots at PS 3 during the second round of applications beginning June 23. He defended the department's record publicizing the new process.
"The outreach we did was extensive," he said, adding that the agency gets assistance from schools and community organizations for help getting parents up to speed.
Gary Cameron-Xavier, father of PS 3 prekindergarten student Gary Xavier, 4, said enrolling his son for his current class had been so easy it was all taken care of in one day.
Now, he said, there is "one more obstacle to prevent a child from going to school," he said. "Members of [this] community need outreach."
Meanwhile, parents with prekindergarten application mix-ups could expect notice soon. Letters to parents were set to go out yesterday, said Education Department spokesman Jacob.
The majority of the fewer than 200 problems were related to students with older brothers and sisters at a school not being given first priority, as agency policy calls for, he said.