New London -- The city's budget crisis forced the Board of Education to eliminate in-district preschool just when state and national officials are recognizing the importance of such programs to a child's future success. "There're so many studies out there that show that preschool experiences stop a lot of things long term: dropout rates, crime ... not having those is going to affect us," Christine Carver, director of special services for New London Public Schools, said. Early childhood teacher Kathryn Patterson helps parents find preschool slots. She said trying to quantify the number of preschool openings eliminated is a bit complicated. Half-day preschool programs serving 28 children each were eliminated at Nathan Hale School and Edgerton Elementary School. "Those were real programs with teachers and teaching assistants in them, and those were eliminated," Patterson said. In addition, requests for preschool funding at Winthrop Elementary School and Harbor Elementary School were denied. Each of those programs would have served 28 children. The Winthrop program request would have replaced a program eliminated when its teacher was transferred as part of the school district's obligation to provide teachers for the Friendship School, Patterson said. Harbor School's request represented a new program that would have boosted New London's preschool slots to 112 if the Winthrop program had also been approved. The free programs were open to all 4-year-olds living in the districts of the participating schools. The cuts come as a blow to the school district, which was hoping to get ahead of the flood of children applying for preschool with its participation in the Friendship School, a community magnet school in Waterford for preschool and kindergarten students. Even though the in-district program was cut, the city's participation in the Friendship School has resulted in a net increase of about 16 preschool seats for New London children, not counting the proposed expansion of the program to include Harbor School. While that helps some, Superintendent of Schools Dr. Christopher Clouet said the result is disappointing. "What we had hoped for was the Friendship School and an expansion in our schools so we would be able to serve all the kids in our schools," he said. "That's going to have a devastating effect," Carver, the director of special services, said of the elimination, adding that the small increase is not enough. "There still will be a couple of hundred kids in New London not served by preschool," she said. Carver said she hopes the school will be able to fill the gap left by the elimination of the Edgerton dual-language program. "The intent is to have a dual-language program at the preschool, but it's contingent on the staff," she said. Admission to the Friendship School was done on a lottery basis. 283 students applied for the 127 slots. "That was unbelievable," Patterson said of the number of children who applied to the Friendship School. And while the large number of applicants might have been daunting, Patterson said it wasn't surprising. "We knew from the beginning, we knew that the Friendship School would never be enough," Patterson said. And while the Friendship School is an option, that news comes too late for parents who had planned to send their children to the local in-district programs. "It's unfortunate because the lottery's already happened," Carver said. The Friendship School lottery was held in April, well before the budget crisis played out earlier this month. Clouet said Governor M. Jodi Rell's recent endorsement of universal preschool provided little benefit for the city. He said she allocated "a very small amount of money, a lot of which is going to be aimed at training people." He said Eastern Connecticut State University "got a huge chunk of money" for its early childhood education program. "I had hoped that we would be able to use some of the money to increase some of our services here," Clouet said, calling the situation a disappointment. "We're not going to be able to get any of that," he said. As explained by Patricia King, director of children's services at the Child and Family Agency and co-chair of the New London School Readiness Council, "The City of New London still gets school readiness funding from the state of Connecticut, but there's not an increase to balance off what the public schools are eliminating." She said that the state mandates that a preschool program focus on more than just academics. "You look at the whole child and be sure that the child's needs -- health, social services, nutrition, are all being met," she said. "Because if those other basic needs are not being met, the child can't learn." Patterson, the early childhood teacher, said the cuts came at the worst time, when the importance of preschool is finally being recognized. "It's very frustrating to be getting calls from parents who are looking at preschool ... and now we have to turn around and say we're short. Well, sadly, for New London, we have to say it was eliminated," Patterson said. Patterson is waiting for the calls from desperate parents to start coming in. "I had three calls this morning," she said one day last week. "We probably get 10 calls a week." So far, she's been able to refer parents to other New London programs but she knows that as time goes by, there will be fewer available spaces and more parents desperate to place their children. "The problem with most of our families, the programs I'm sending them to to say 'here you can check those out,' they can't afford them," she said. She also pointed out that many families with working parents won't qualify for the federally sponsored Head Start program because even entry-level workers often make too much money. "If you saw the income guidelines for Head Start, you'd be astounded," Patterson said. "It's a Catch-22. Some programs are too expensive; the other program in town that's so great for kids, Head Start, their parents make too much money," she said. Patterson said it's particularly frustrating for the working poor. Many of them can't afford to pay for services but also earn a little too much to qualify for many programs, putting them in an untenable situation. "They're stuck; they can't go either way," she said. Patterson challenged people who thought preschool was unnecessary to explore the program more. "They are working on literacy skills, and I think anyone who would say preschool is babysitting is looking at an old-fashioned view," she said. "For kids in inner-city schools, it just makes a huge difference in their lives."