More than 4,400 families of kids who qualified and applied for public school gifted and talented programs were not offered a seat for the fall — doubling the number of rejects from last year.

The Department of Education made offers to just 54 percent of the nearly 10,000 qualified applicants for accelerated programs in kindergarten through third grade this year, down from 72.5 percent last year.

This was the first year that the city did not guarantee a seat for every kid who scored high enough to be in G&T, because of a surge in the number of kids who qualified. Nearly 10,000 eligible kids applied for a seat this year, up from roughly 7,500 students in 2012.