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Preschool Panic (the Continuing Story)
So the talk of the town, the town in question being New York City, right now is about preschool admissions. Notification of acceptances, rejections and waitlists happens this week for many (but not all... certainly not because that would make certain decisions simpler) nursery schools. The application process has been long, confusing, and through no fault of its own, chafes so hard that all of one's insecurities are hovering just beneath one's increasingly thin-skinned exterior. It has been on my mind in various forms for months now.
I'm far from alone, though this is an instance where there is no safety in numbers. (The enormous volume of tots needing edification being the problem to begin with.) An Op-ed piece in the New York Times exercises some of the angst and weirdness that goes with making something that shouldn't be that complicated incredibly difficult. This is nursery school, after all.
The Op-Ed is a parody of a "first choice" letter to a nursery school. You didn't misread that, and yes, the whole "first choice" question made me nostalgic for my pre-college days, too. Someone I know told me that her kid was accepted to nursery school based on "early decision."
The first choice letter is one of several missives that one is supposed to send to preschools schools as the last step of the application process. The nuances are something I can appreciate, given my interest in etiquette. There is something really Henry Jamesian about the whole exercise because these letters are not explicitly requested by the schools and their qualities are defined by very specific linguistic choices.
If you send a first choice letter, and you can only send one to one school, it should be the school you intend to send your kid to should he or she be accepted. Indeed, many of the schools communicate with each other, so there is a chance you could be caught should you try to hedge your bets with multiple first choice notes. You must incorporate first choice language into the letter (witness the Op-Ed example), and understand that sending this letter is like giving a Gentleman's handshake on a deal. If one is squicked out by having to commit, there is another letter one can send to express interest without an implicit promise. Sending an "I Love You" letter to a school, or schools, expresses extreme passion for the institution or institutions. It shows you care. Finally, if even the "I Love You" is too strong a message to send, there is the gentler "Thank You" note, which is a polite missive, thanking the school for its attention.
And even when it is easy, it isn't really that simple. Some schools aren't interested in first choice letters or anything of the sort, but then even the mailing of applications can take on a certain Cold War mystery. One school I know of is very fair in that it accepts children on a "first come, first served" basis, but to apply one must go to a specific mailbox before the first pick up on a certain Friday in February and post the application then and only then. Hand deliveries or alternative mail options are not accepted. If your application arrives before the following Monday, you will receive a call telling you to pick up the application and place it in the mailbox again.
I suppose this beats what some other "first come, first served" schools do, which is pretend that people can just drop in and pick up applications, when in actuality this results in freaked out parents literally camping out overnight on the street to be among the "first come".
There are, of course, plenty of choices when it comes to preschools and much of the insanity is due to neighborhoods suddenly seeing population booms or other vicissitudes. Really, this is one of those syndromes that is a big deal or completely under the radar, depending on how you feel about nursery school in the first place.
But don't look out into your splendid back yard and watch the family of deer happily capering in the twilight and rejoice that you're not living in Gotham. Preschool madness is spreading everywhere probably because there is no such thing as public nursery school. Friends in various parts of the country have complained about the difficulty and angst of school admissions.
So, just because New York City is an unfortunate trendsetter in this, doesn't mean nursery school freak-out isn't coming to your town soon. Sadly, this is another "call your Congressperson" scenario.
posted by Elise at 3:59 AM
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said...
While the situation is not nearly so dire down here in North Carolina, I do have a friend whose two choices are a school that recently was found to have a child molester on staff (and who did, in fact, molest five children in his class) and one that is so rigid about the age requirements that they won't consider putting her son in the next age grouping even though he misses the age cut off by one day (and is literally so precocious that at two he is doing things my four-year-old has only recently learned to do. Sorry for the Jamesian length of that sentence! I was much luckier in my picks of preschools.
Good luck with the choice and here's to hoping that you have one.
--Elizabeth
3/05/2007 5:11 PM
said...
If the preschools were just honest from the beginning and told you they only have 5 spots for nonsiblings, it would save so much time and stress. At least you wouldn't bother applying. Why can't they figure out how many spots they have ahead of time?
3/06/2007 8:02 PM
Elise said...
Well, I think it is at once unfair and complicated. The schools have a good idea of how many spots they will have, but people move or decide to send siblings to other schools, so those numbers change a lot.
Some schools have tried to take your suggestion and create "lotteries" where they only allow 3-4 families (drawn supposedly at random from a pool of pre-applications) to apply for each spot they predict will be available. This makes a degree of sense, but you can see how incredibly Byzantine these sorts of arrangements can get. There may even be some juggling systems that I don't know about. I am only privy to the most obvious preschool application sorting systems.
3/07/2007 4:26 AM
said...
But there is public preschool; it just depends on where you are. Sometimes it's only offered to at-risk or low income children, but in other places, it's open to everyone. It all depends on the needs and budget of your locality.
3/11/2007 6:35 PM
Elise said...
Oh interesting. In New York City, I think there really is no such critter except when it can exist as "pre-kindergarten"-- which would be that lat 4 to early 5 year-old year. At any rate, there have been scads of studies done about the benefits of early childhood education, so it is really an oversight that it is not more commonly offered (for more than that single year) throughout the United States.
3/11/2007 7:09 PM
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