There is only space for half the applicants to pre-kindergarten programs.

Maria Morales only has room for 36 children in her pre-kindergarten classroom.

The waiting list is so long she could easily fill another. She knows that few, if any, of the four-year-olds on that list will get a seat in her class. They'll have to find another program.

"I wish we had more spots," said Morales, who is in charge of registration for the two-and-a-half-hour morning and afternoon universal pre-kindergarten at Incarnation School on W. 175th Street. "We don't have room for another class."

In July parents across Manhattan learned whether their children got into a universal pre-kindergarten (UPK) class this fall. There are far more applicants than seats. Borough-wide, two-thirds of kids won't get a seat. In District 6, which encompasses Washington Heights, Inwood and part of West Harlem, a little more than half won't get a seat.

"We try to increase the number of full-day seats wherever possible," said Matthew Mittenhal, a spokesperson for the Department of Education, which oversees the programs. "But funding for UPK is limited."

The cost of a UPK seat is just over $3,000 per student per year for a six-hour day, a bargain when compared to $12,433 per student price tag for students in kindergarten through 12th grade. But despite the name, it is not guaranteed. There is an application process and two rounds of admissions. Slots are given on an eight-point priority list based on where a student lives, where they are applying and if a sibling already attends the school. After students are prioritized, if there are still more students than seats, they are assigned randomly.

When he ran for office, District 10 City Council Member Ydanis Rodriguez campaigned on bringing more educational services to children under five years of age.

"There's no doubt there's a real need," Rodriguez said. "I believe it has even reached the level of crisis. There's a crisis when society left behind education for children under five years old."

Rodriguez has been holding meetings with the city's Administration for Children's Services to find ways to increase the amount of space for not only UPK but Head Start, a federally funded program that educates children under four, and also for art, gym and music classes for children under six.

"We are working to identify potential sites where we have some empty lots to see if we can get some investors or [the Department of Housing, Preservation and Development] to build affordable housing where also ACS is committed to get some capital funding to create more seats for pre-k programs in our community," Rodriguez said.

District 6 has the lowest number of full-time UPK seats in the borough, and the third highest number of applicants for any seat, full or part time.

According to statistics from the DOE, only 22 percent of eligible students applied for a seat last year in Northern Manhattan. Still, less than half of those children who applied – 564 wiggly and squirmy students – found a desk at a UPK site in District 6 last year.

Of those lucky students who did get in, only a little more than half got into a full-time program. The rest were enrolled half-time, spending 2.5 hours in the program in either the morning or afternoon.

Morales commiserates with the parents who get turned away from the program. Her oldest son, Edwin, who graduated from high school in the spring, didn't get a seat when he was four, in 1993.

He went to Head Start, Morales said, but had to sit out his UPK year, and then started school again as a kindergartner. Then Morales didn't work, so she could stay home with Edwin. Back then there were approximately 260 seats available during the height of the district's overcrowding. Eight years later her daughter, Emily, did get one of 279 UPK seats, but only half time. Morales had a job then, but Emily's grandmother stepped in to pick her up after class.

"We have, today, 45 on the waiting list and I'm sure it's going to go up," said Carolyn Wiggins, executive director of the Fort George Head Start program at Fort George Presbyterian Church.

Ninety percent of her three-year-olds in Head Start will graduate into the half-time UPK program, meaning that there's never really space for children from outside the program, which is a shame because of the potential benefits.

"The advantage of being in an early education program is you get a head start," Wiggins said. "The earlier you start the more successful you are in life."