September 2, 2007 -- The math just doesn't add up at the city's schools for the gifted and talented.
Despite a record 13,266 applications for the coveted seats, more than 1,000 slots will go unfilled this semester, frustrating parents who went through a new, centralized admissions process.
Of the 4,460 seats available in the five boroughs, only 3,350 were filled as of last week, and the Department of Education does not expect the number to change dramatically.
That leaves about 1,110 seats vacant.
The reason, according to the DOE, is supply and demand.
On the gifted and talented application, parents list their desired schools in order of preference. They choose among schools in their own districts and three citywide programs.
Parents are only entitled to one offer. So if they're placed on the waiting list of their first choice, and a second or third-choice school makes an offer, they are automatically removed from the waiting list of their first choice.
To get around this winner-take-all approach, many parents will list only their first choice, hoping they aren't shuffled to another school.
"You don't have the option of saying, no, I'd rather stay on the wait list of my first choice," said one Upper West Side parent, who is still trying to get her 7-year-old son into a gifted program. "So putting only one school seems to help your chances. But if you don't get in, you get nothing. That's where I am."
"If there are still open seats, I wish I could apply now," she said.
Ideally, parents said, the city would approach parents who did not get offers at the end of the process and let them know which programs have available seats.
But that would be unfair, according to the DOE.
"It's not fair to those parents who put several options and maybe got their second choice to reopen the process and give other parents a second shot," said DOE spokesman Andrew Jacob. "Our goal is to make the process transparent and fair."
He emphasized that the DOE "made plenty of offers" - 5,900 in multiple rounds - but said, "If parents didn't choose specific schools or rejected offers at those schools, then those programs weren't filled. It really is supply and demand."
