Morning and afternoon rallies will bracket lawmakers' workdays this Wednesday, May 6, with the focus squarely on kindergarten admissions. This year public school kindergarten admissions feature wait lists, overcrowding, and increasingly high demand for seats in neighborhoods where parents are being turned away from -- or asked to patiently wait for -- their zoned schools.

Starting with a 9  a.m. march from Battery Park, leading to a public event in City Hall Park at 10:30, "thousands" of city parents, union members and plain citizens are expected to  join AFSCME (the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, AFL-CIO) organizers to protest the Bloomberg budget proposal that cuts kindergarten from New York City-administered day care centers. The proposed closures would  effectively move 3,500 (or more) youngsters from city-run day care to public-school kindergarten classrooms (or wait lists). Event organizers say that at least three dozen City Council members will be present, as will Comptroller William Thompson, at least two borough presidents --Marty Markowitzof Brooklyn and Helen Marshallof Queens -- and union leaders from New York and Washington, D.C.

That afternoon at 4 p.m., education advocates and parents will rally on the steps of City Hall to protest a "Kindergarten Krisis," charging that more than 400 schoolchildren have "no school seats" for the fall term, particularly in neighborhoods like Manhattan's Upper East Side, Tribeca, and Greenwich Village, where high demand has met with a limited supply of desirable kindergarten space. The problems are not unique to Manhattan: Brooklyn's District 20 faces stiff challenges in its oversubscribed elementary and middle schools, and District 24 in Queens has already been busing young children, moving entire grades to schoolyard trailers, and making do with buildings that serve twice as many children than they were built to shelter.

Insideschools.org is surveying elementary-school principals to learn more about the kindergarten admissions process this year; feel free to comment below, especially if you know of a school or a district where the problems are particularly acute.