TOO FEW SPOTS FOR TOTS

City’s free pre-K crisis

The huge demand for free preschool seats is outpacing supply in nearly 50% of the Big Apple’s zip codes — despite hundreds of the 3-K spots remaining vacant in other stretches of the city, newly released data show.

Brooklyn’s Bath Beach is among the neighborhoods facing the biggest shortages of free child-care spots for 3-year-olds, with 633 applicants vying for just 232 seats, according to city Department of Education data.

A similar shortage plagued parents in Parkchester in The Bronx, where there were 420 applicants for 162 seats. In central Staten Island, there were 432 applicants competing for 253 allocated seats.

Baby mama drama

“The problem is lots of the daycare centers participate in 3-K so they already have 2-year-olds in the day care. When they turn 3, they have priority,” Queens mom Cheme Gurung, 40, told The Post on Wednesday of the struggle to snag her daughter a spot.

Gurung, managing director at a private-equity firm, currently has applications out for 12 different 3-K programs across Astoria where the majority of seats are already filled.

“Right now I don’t even know if my daughter got into any,” she said, adding that she won’t find out until May. “I am hoping for the best. There is no Plan B. Plan B is probably me going out of my zone or district and probably paying for it.”

At the other end of the spectrum, though, there were hundreds of freed up seats in sections of the city with no one trying to snatch them.

On Manhattan’s Lower East Side, for example, there were 821 free seats but only 247 applicants, data show.

East Flatbush in Brooklyn had just 320 applicants for 3-K in a neighborhood that has capacity for 829 preschool seats. And in neighboring Brownsville, there was a surplus of 397 seats for its 778 spot capacity.

Citywide, there was a surplus of more than 10,000 seats, with a total of 41,622 applications for the 52,766 spots available in the Big Apple’s free toddler program, according to the data, which was first obtained by Gothamist.

“Get your children in from [when] they are babies,” Brooklyn mom, Ilona Lelch, said as she offered up advice on securing 3-K spots in competitive areas like Bath Beach where she lives.

Her 3-year-old son was among those given preferential treatment because he’d already been attending a day-care program prior to being eligible for 3-K.

“The nursery has a certain amount of spots. We were lucky to get into that so we could get into this,” she said, noting her sister was forced to stay home to take care of her daughter because she couldn’t even get on the waiting list.

“That inconvenienced her a lot and babysitters were too expensive,” Lelch added.

And that’s before cuts

The figures emerged in the same week Schools Chancellor David Banks and other DOE officials were grilled by the City Council at a hearing over what the Adams administration was doing to address the existing gaps in seats, as well as looming budget cuts to the program.

The 3-K program, which can save parents tens of thousands of dollars in child care, is among the initiatives currently backed by $93 million in federal stimulus cash set to dry up on June 30.

It is also among the programs facing $170 million in possible reductions overall this fiscal year amid citywide budget cuts.