NYC's Public School Squeeze

New York's school system is now in a state of "crisis," with many toddlers unsure of where they'll matriculate next fall. For once, however, it's not the recession that's to blame. The city's public schools are overrun because of a dramatic post-9/11 baby boom, with Manhattanites under the age of 5 growing 32 percent in the last 5 years. And the middle-class neighborhoods that once enjoyed independent schools are now facing tight control by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Education Chancellor Joel Klein. But because birth rates have risen in the last few years, New Yorkers now realize that Bloomberg and Klein were simply "poor judges of velocity." As class sizes have grown this year (despite $149 million in earmarks to keep them small) and waitlists have piled up, many New York families "lost in the system's reinvention" are trying to find their way out - and through the gates of a local public school next fall.