The economics of preschool
This morning my whole day got ruined by some nice lady named Teresa, who called my house from a highly selective preschool. This particular preschool is affiliated with the university, and we signed up both our children years ago, just knowing they would never get in. Anyway, today this ho-bag called to tell me that they had a spot for Isaac in their 4s class, would we like to take it?
UGH.
Over the course of the day I called to tell Daddy, we took a tour of the school, and I made a pro/con list. This school, it is all pros and all cons, all at once. Nothing is simple. And in the space of one day, we must decide -- should we leave our school, which we love, for this fabled and awesome school that only a few people get in and costs a lot of money?
Let me tell you a bit about this new school. It is a teaching school. The reason they are so selective has nothing to do with your kid as a person and everything to do with statistics. Their classes must be half boys and girls, half University kids and half townie kids, and with birthdays evenly spread throughout the year. This is done for research purposes. They also use the school both as a model classroom to show early learning students at the U how they should do things, because the teachers are just that awesome. Seriously. There are news articles about how they win state-wide teaching awards. They have 1 head teacher, a different lady per "grade",who is a professor of early childhood education. One year-long appointed assistant teacher helps her out. Also, 2, sometimes 3, student teachers help out at a time in the classroom. These student teachers rotate out of the classroom every 9 weeks. So, great teachers, two always there, but lots of strange faces.
And did I mention the one-way mirrors? They have rooms where you as a parent, or as a student of a class, can sit and observe the kids. The students are there for learning purposes, of course, to observe how these awesome teachers interact with the kids. But still, a bit creepy to me to think that strangers you've never met might be staring down your kid during the day.
Extreme pluses for this new school, aside from the chronicled awesomeness of the teachers, are as follows. They also, oddly, contain their own minuses:
1) It is literally across the street from Daddy's office. Daddy could pretty much see Isaac on their playground from his window if he wanted to. And next year they are moving to a different building off campus, away from Daddy's watchful eye.
2) Their playground? It is huge and unbelievable. They have trikes and a mini safety town for the kids to ride in. They have a garden. A lookout tower, even. Climbable trees. Will they have the same scene next year? Who knows.
3) They have kindergarten, and though it is full-day, it is very low-key and sensitive to each kid, thanks to a low teacher-to-student ratio. Their kindergarten takes advantage of university professors, who show up to give demonstrations and teach the kids about music and science and what have you. Kindergarten, though, is where it stops. After that, Isaac will probably go to 1st grade in public school, with kids who were all best buds in kindergarten last year, leaving him the odd man out.
4) They take field trips, which our school does not. I will probably have to transport him for these, and need a sitter for Jake in the meantime.
5) Once Isaac is in, Jake is almost (though a big almost) guaranteed a place in their 3s program next year, so they would be at the same school. I say "almost" because they reserve the right to keep their almighty sex and age quotas a priority over sibling enrollment.
The biggest minus is the cost. It's not necessarily significant for this year, though it is nearly twice as much as the pittance we pay for Isaac's preschool now. But next year, tuition for him to attend their full-time kindergarten, plus Jacob attending the 3s class, would be enough for us to almost rule out buying a new car, which we may need by then.
So, being the chintzy person I am, I have to do a cost-benefit analysis. Do we dislike our school enough that it's worth it to switch? That question makes it all seem very dumb, because we love our current school. I feel like Isaac is just now beginning to blossom, to really enjoy what school is all about, to socialize with all the kids, perhaps because he's known the setting and the people for over a year now.
However, I have actually wondered about switching Isaac to a different preschool lately because I've found out a few things about families from our school, two in particular, that I didn't like. Nothing that would ever affect Isaac's safety at school, more along the lines of a glaring beacon that our school's delectable pricing beckons trailer trash. Also? Isaac doesn't seem to really hit it off, in more than a casual way, with any of the kids from his school, except for a boy from one of the aforementioned unsavory families, and a really nice girl that lives in our neighborhood, who we would hang out with regardless of where he went to school. I don't mean to be elitist in any way, just practical, but -- I know we go to the cheapest preschool in town, and so I know that the low low price tag may carry some consequences with it. As a friend told me today, again, in a non-elitist way, sometimes you don't mind paying a little extra to get rid of certain kinds of distractions.
Really, though, those things don't bother me that much, because I feel that Isaac is perfectly safe at his school. I couldn't ask for better guardians than Ms. Susie and Ms. Barbara. I am continuously enthused about their curriculum, this simple but ridiculously fun and effective letter-of-the-week thing. It provides easy continuity, routine, and many opportunities for parental involvement. Isaac has learned so, so much from them about reading and writing. That being said, he is a bright kid and I know that he is not terribly intellectually challenged by his preschool, but I entered into this game in the mindset that preschool, for my Isaac, was not about pushing him to do math flashcards. It was about getting him ready socially and emotionally for the routines and expectations of real school. Last year his social and emotional hurdles were rather great. I can't imagine trying to put any pressures to perform on top of that. This year, he is like a gorgeous, showy flower that has opened up under the tender, watchful gardening of Mses. Susie and Barbara -- singing, dancing, pushing me out the door, leading dinosaur awareness workshops. It is a beautiful thing. Would he be as gorgeous and showy in another garden? Who can know that.
I did ask Isaac what he thought about switching schools, and he was totally cool with it. But those are my kids -- for the most part they are very much go with the flow. So here I am. And we have to decide by tomorrow, in part because the new preschool takes school pictures on Monday. I return to my initial statement -- UGH.
UGH.
Over the course of the day I called to tell Daddy, we took a tour of the school, and I made a pro/con list. This school, it is all pros and all cons, all at once. Nothing is simple. And in the space of one day, we must decide -- should we leave our school, which we love, for this fabled and awesome school that only a few people get in and costs a lot of money?
Let me tell you a bit about this new school. It is a teaching school. The reason they are so selective has nothing to do with your kid as a person and everything to do with statistics. Their classes must be half boys and girls, half University kids and half townie kids, and with birthdays evenly spread throughout the year. This is done for research purposes. They also use the school both as a model classroom to show early learning students at the U how they should do things, because the teachers are just that awesome. Seriously. There are news articles about how they win state-wide teaching awards. They have 1 head teacher, a different lady per "grade",who is a professor of early childhood education. One year-long appointed assistant teacher helps her out. Also, 2, sometimes 3, student teachers help out at a time in the classroom. These student teachers rotate out of the classroom every 9 weeks. So, great teachers, two always there, but lots of strange faces.
And did I mention the one-way mirrors? They have rooms where you as a parent, or as a student of a class, can sit and observe the kids. The students are there for learning purposes, of course, to observe how these awesome teachers interact with the kids. But still, a bit creepy to me to think that strangers you've never met might be staring down your kid during the day.
Extreme pluses for this new school, aside from the chronicled awesomeness of the teachers, are as follows. They also, oddly, contain their own minuses:
1) It is literally across the street from Daddy's office. Daddy could pretty much see Isaac on their playground from his window if he wanted to. And next year they are moving to a different building off campus, away from Daddy's watchful eye.
2) Their playground? It is huge and unbelievable. They have trikes and a mini safety town for the kids to ride in. They have a garden. A lookout tower, even. Climbable trees. Will they have the same scene next year? Who knows.
3) They have kindergarten, and though it is full-day, it is very low-key and sensitive to each kid, thanks to a low teacher-to-student ratio. Their kindergarten takes advantage of university professors, who show up to give demonstrations and teach the kids about music and science and what have you. Kindergarten, though, is where it stops. After that, Isaac will probably go to 1st grade in public school, with kids who were all best buds in kindergarten last year, leaving him the odd man out.
4) They take field trips, which our school does not. I will probably have to transport him for these, and need a sitter for Jake in the meantime.
5) Once Isaac is in, Jake is almost (though a big almost) guaranteed a place in their 3s program next year, so they would be at the same school. I say "almost" because they reserve the right to keep their almighty sex and age quotas a priority over sibling enrollment.
The biggest minus is the cost. It's not necessarily significant for this year, though it is nearly twice as much as the pittance we pay for Isaac's preschool now. But next year, tuition for him to attend their full-time kindergarten, plus Jacob attending the 3s class, would be enough for us to almost rule out buying a new car, which we may need by then.
So, being the chintzy person I am, I have to do a cost-benefit analysis. Do we dislike our school enough that it's worth it to switch? That question makes it all seem very dumb, because we love our current school. I feel like Isaac is just now beginning to blossom, to really enjoy what school is all about, to socialize with all the kids, perhaps because he's known the setting and the people for over a year now.
However, I have actually wondered about switching Isaac to a different preschool lately because I've found out a few things about families from our school, two in particular, that I didn't like. Nothing that would ever affect Isaac's safety at school, more along the lines of a glaring beacon that our school's delectable pricing beckons trailer trash. Also? Isaac doesn't seem to really hit it off, in more than a casual way, with any of the kids from his school, except for a boy from one of the aforementioned unsavory families, and a really nice girl that lives in our neighborhood, who we would hang out with regardless of where he went to school. I don't mean to be elitist in any way, just practical, but -- I know we go to the cheapest preschool in town, and so I know that the low low price tag may carry some consequences with it. As a friend told me today, again, in a non-elitist way, sometimes you don't mind paying a little extra to get rid of certain kinds of distractions.
Really, though, those things don't bother me that much, because I feel that Isaac is perfectly safe at his school. I couldn't ask for better guardians than Ms. Susie and Ms. Barbara. I am continuously enthused about their curriculum, this simple but ridiculously fun and effective letter-of-the-week thing. It provides easy continuity, routine, and many opportunities for parental involvement. Isaac has learned so, so much from them about reading and writing. That being said, he is a bright kid and I know that he is not terribly intellectually challenged by his preschool, but I entered into this game in the mindset that preschool, for my Isaac, was not about pushing him to do math flashcards. It was about getting him ready socially and emotionally for the routines and expectations of real school. Last year his social and emotional hurdles were rather great. I can't imagine trying to put any pressures to perform on top of that. This year, he is like a gorgeous, showy flower that has opened up under the tender, watchful gardening of Mses. Susie and Barbara -- singing, dancing, pushing me out the door, leading dinosaur awareness workshops. It is a beautiful thing. Would he be as gorgeous and showy in another garden? Who can know that.
I did ask Isaac what he thought about switching schools, and he was totally cool with it. But those are my kids -- for the most part they are very much go with the flow. So here I am. And we have to decide by tomorrow, in part because the new preschool takes school pictures on Monday. I return to my initial statement -- UGH.
posted by Claire at 10:11 PM
2 Comments:
As I was reading this, I thought of our own situation... because we have a similar opportunity for kindergarten next year with a lot of the same pros and cons. And honestly? I'm leaning toward no.
Reading your post, I was 100% "no don't do it, why change a good thing?" until I got to the part about the unsavory families and that Isaac doesn't have many solid friendships at the current school. That made me think maybe it might be worth... what is there to lose?
For me it would come down to how happy my child was with the current teachers, think... if he adores them, is thriving and is overall very happy there... I wouldn't touch it. But next year, if J is offered a spot in 3's and hasn't had the opportunity to get settled in at Isaac's current preschool, I'd say go for it!
Wow... tough decision...
My gut feeling was to leave well enough alone. If he is happy where he is, then that's beyond a perfect goal for this age. You mentioned his sensitivies in the past, and I think (just think since I obviously don't know him) that saying you don't care about switching schools and actually doing it are two completely different things.
Additionally, for every pro, you truly came up with it's equal con. Did you do pros and cons on the current school?
As a teacher, we want the kids to come into kindergarten knowing how to follow rules, sit on the carpet (or at their desks/tables), and know that they are one of a group, instead of the world revolving around them. He is getting all of that in EITHER preschool. We don't expect kids to come in reading, or having memorized math facts. While the parents love that their child is doing it, it's positively not necessary.
I don't know - call me paranoid, but I get nervous thinking the grass might be greener, when it's already green enough where I am. But I am not a risk taker - not even a little bit. Good luck! I hope your decision making went well!
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