PS 8 has been struggling with overcrowding for years and was at 142% of capacity last year, according to the PTA. In order to make more classrooms available for the growing population, the school has already cut arts classes, added annex classrooms and cut its pre-k program, despite the citywide effort to find 25,000 more pre-k seats. Meanwhile, hundreds of new residential units are planned for the neighborhood, bringing even more families to the already overburdened system. 

Brooklyn Heights is not the first area to suffer from this issue. Lower Manhattan has gone through a similar housing boom and went as far as to create a Lower Manhattan School Overcrowding Task Force to urge the city to create more schools. It took almost a decade, but, ultimately, three new schools were added to the accommodate the enormous influx. Parent advocacy does work! But ,overcrowding continues to be an issue in many other neighborhoods throughout the city. 

Of course, parents of children entering kindergarten can't wait for solutions. Mary Kim, a parent who lives in close proximity to PS 8 is understandably anxious about where her child may end up next year. "I am very concerned," Kim told DNAinfo , whose 4-year-old applied to the school. "Especially since preference is given to children with siblings that are already at the school and my son does not have one."

Meanwhile, parents with children currently enrolled face growing class sizes and the loss of extras, like art rooms and their library, to make room for new students. Liz Gumbinner, a mom with a 4th and a 2nd grader at PS 8, is sympathetic to parents new to the neighborhood though. "The real issue is all these damn developers who get to put up humongous apartment buildings that bring in young families, without having to take any responsibility for increasing city services for them," says Gumbinner. "I say, you want to build a new 400-unit building in DUMBO? Great. Build a new 400-student school, too." 

Parents in the school district have penned a letter to the DOE, asking that before any additional residential construction be approved, something be done about the increasing need for more public schooling options. 

As a NYC mother whose child is just two years shy of kindergarten, stories like these make me a bit nervous about what the situation will be when I start applying.

Is overcrowding an issue at your local school? What was your kindergarten application process like? Tell us in the comments.