NY Mag: The Brooklyn Preschooler Glut

It's somewhat surprising to me that there hasn't been a flurry of new private schools opening in the city. At the prices they can currently command and the obvious excess demand (higher admittance rates to Harvard than to Horace Mann kindergarten, I believe I read), you'd think someone would open up a few new schools. But perhaps the economics still just don't work out, and I guess profit-minded entrepreneurs by definition don't go into non-profit.

:idea: Hmmmm, perhaps someday I'll open a for-profit private elementary school--as my target customer I can go after the Patagucci-wearing, latte-drinking brats that have Kensington Mom so up in arms. Does Patagucci make uniforms, I wonder?

Part of what is going on is that families from lower Manhattan are flooding highly selective and creative Brooklyn Heights schools. I wonder if Manhattan families are absorbing some of the spots in the schools in the Slope, too.

Femme

Yeah, I remember when my kids were at Berkeley. At a meeting one of the people who worked for the school was gushing over how many applicants were from Manhattan - with the implication they were far superior to us chumps who had been paying them admission for years - back to the days when they had 20 kids in the High School. Really warms the heart.

There are indeed Manhattan kids at Berkeley, but who cares? Also, obviously I wasn't there but I suspect that Berkeley worker was gushing more about the fact that the school is known beyond just the confines of the area and has a strong citywide reputation. I highly doubt any Berkeley employee would denigrate Bklyn or imply that Bklyn kids were "chumps". Come on.

You're right, I was referring to the high school.

I remember meeting a woman from lower Manhattan at a party who told me that she had an interview set up with Poly Prep for her kid. I have no idea whether she ended up sending the kid there, but at the time I spoke with her she was really psyched about the school and didn't seem too concerned about the commute. Isn't Poly Prep's lower school just a few blocks from Berkeley-Carroll?

femmedada wrote: I remember meeting a woman from lower Manhattan at a party who told me that she had an interview set up with Poly Prep for her kid. I have no idea whether she ended up sending the kid there, but at the time I spoke with her she was really psyched about the school and didn't seem too concerned about the commute. Isn't Poly Prep's lower school just a few blocks from Berkeley-Carroll?

Yes it is. Are you sure she meant the lower school? Seems crazy to me, but I think Poly has a better reputation than BC. I don't think BC is on the radar at all for Manhattan parents until their kid gets kicked out of Dalton.

I have one kid in public school and one kid in private school and my experience has been that private school is NOT WORTH IT if you have good public school options. My kid struggled in public and then struggled even more in private, despite the small class sizes. Now he sees a tutor for two hours a week and everything has turned around. So it turns out I could have saved the private school tuition and just gotten a tutor. :roll:

WTguest wrote:
cool. I have heard similar, that the public schools are very good until middle school. But what is a good public school? You hear so many different things from different sources that it feels overwhelming.

Spend some time on [/url]http://insideschools.org/[url]; it is a great source of information on NYC public schools.

There are good public middle schools out there, don't worry.

Why can't I ever get my links to work?

Rose--

This woman's kid was young--five, possibly six. I think she must have been talking about the Lower School or whatever Poly Prep calls it.

Femme

Re Poly's reputation vs BCS: When you start talking ancient history (19th, early to mid 20th century), the sons of Brooklyn's elite went to Poly (in Bay Ridge) and their daughters went to Packer. So historically, yes, Poly has much more renown than BCS.

But sending your kids to a school based solely on its historical renown or brand recognition among a certain set sounds like something Kensingtonmom might take issue with! Excluding religious or montessori schools, there are 5 really great private schools in Brooklyn: BCS, Poly, Packer, St. A, and Bklyn Friends, and which you want your kids to go to is a matter of personal choice (yours, and the admissions officer's!).

We liked BCS the best: warmest atmosphere, great parent culture (duh - what else do you expect in Park Slope?), great facilities, good values (stressed community service even for 3 year olds!). Friends and Packer were cool too, but St. A turned us off (maybe it was the 11 year old students smoking outside....) and Poly left us cold.

Re Poly Lower School: management is perceived by a number of parents as unfriendly, teachers are generally great.

I attended one of the BK 5, way back when, in both middle and high school and my perception was that there was a big difference in the cultures at that level between the brooklyn and manhattan prep schools. Brooklyn schools tended to have a fair number of kids from working class families and folks who were professionals (doctors, lawyers, etc) and not as many old money folks. I always found my classmates to be much more grounded in reality with less of the skiing the alps and sping break in st. barts kind of kids. My counterparts in the city were far more likely to be much wealthier and have a lot less interaction with the masses.

I went to school with a lot of kids whose parents were sacrificing to get them a decent education and the kids knew it. Back then there were almost no kids that came into brooklyn from the city to go to school. The exceptions were usually kids whose families moved and they were far enough along that one or two years of a reverse commute wasn't considered to be a hardship.

As a life long NYer I think that parents get caught up in the hype of the whole prep school thing for young kids. At 3, 4, and 5 there are so many great options amongst public, private and parochial schools in the city. Middle school is really where the options start to narrow, and even then, there are options that don't cost $25k per year if you look hard enough. I'm always surprised that more folks don't take advantage of the Catholic school system in NYC. There are some wonderful small schools and the NY diocese has always been very accomodating of non-catholic students. I rarely hear this discussed as an option.

I've committed to private school for the kids, but prep school will be strictly a high school affair, not before.

Wow.

I just visited the Urban Baby website for the first time.

It seems that there is something of a pecking order among the B5. About five years ago, I was hearing that St. Ann's was the least structured and was the hardest to get into. Over the last year or so, I've been told that Packer was the most selective. It seems that there was some perception that there was a madman at the helm at St. Ann's. He's no longer there so why might St. Ann's be dropping in the ranks? Fickle parents?

I've also heard really, really good things about BC and just okay things about Poly.

Anyone know what's going on?

femmedada wrote:
It seems that there is something of a pecking order among the B5. About five years ago, I was hearing that St. Ann's was the least structured and was the hardest to get into. Over the last year or so, I've been told that Packer was the most selective. It seems that there was some perception that there was a madman at the helm at St. Ann's. He's no longer there so why might St. Ann's be dropping in the ranks? Fickle parents?


Anyone know what's going on?

St. Anns has been very very hot for the past few years, even with the madman at the helm. There was an article somewhere that said that St Anns had the highest percentage of kids accepted to Harvard-Yale-Princeton of any NYC private school. Frenzy ensued.

I think Packer has always had a very good reputation in Brooklyn but has more recently been acquiring hotness among Manhattan parents.

I think the people on Urban Baby who care about such things would say that St Ann is the only "top tier" school in Brooklyn and they would fight about whether Packer is "top tier" or not.

It might be great at getting it Kids into Ivy League Schools but having worked around the corner from St. Anns for many years until recently I can say that it is very bad at keeping the kids in school itself.

Now I wasnt much better as a (public) HS student, but if I was paying 20G+ a year for my kid to go to HS, I'd be pretty upset if they spent most days smoking cigarettes and weed all day - which based on my observations is the dominant activity for a sizable portion of the older student population at St Anns.