The preschool decision

This post is part of an ongoing series on finding child care.

As I have explained previously, we started looking for a full-time preschool for Littles after her sitter informed us that she was pregnant and would not be able to care for Littles as she neared her due date. We came up with three solid preschool options: two Montessori schools (which I will call Montessori A and Montessori B), and a daycare in the Bright Horizons chain.

I initially visited each school on my own. I liked all three, although each had its strengths and weaknesses.

Montessori A
Pros:

• Good word-of-mouth recommendations
• Directors able to clearly articulate the school's educational philosophy and approach
• Lunch not provided by the school. Parents provide lunch, either from home or through a partnership with local restaurants. (I consider this a pro, as I like being able to have significant control over what Littles eats.)
• Starts at 18 months of age. This meant that Littles could potentially start as soon as they had an opening.
• Two campuses, one near our home and one near our sitter's home. This meant that Littles could potentially start with 3 mornings/week at one campus in the winter/spring (with her sitter picking her up), and then move to full-time in the summer at the campus near our home.

Cons:

• In my discussions with the directors, I felt that there might be a little too much emphasis on academics and being "advanced." As I explained in my last post, my main concern is ensuring that Littles learns to love learning, not that she learns specific skills, and I wasn't sure that Montessori A shared that philosophy.
• In my initial discussion with one director, she made a huge deal out of healthy eating and said that she never, ever allowed junk food into the school, even for special occasions/parties. Then I found out from the other director that one of the local restaurants that the school partners with for catered lunches is Chick-fil-a. Along the same lines, I happened to visit the school on Valentine's Day, and saw tons of cookies, cupcakes, and other junk food. What concerned me most was not the presence of the food itself (I could opt out of Chick-fil-a for Littles, and everyone deserves a little junk food on Valentine's Day!) but the fact that the director had made such a big deal out of healthy food over the phone but apparently ignored it in practice.
• Some things made me question how closely the school adhered to the Montessori philosophy. For example, one of the core tenets of Montessori is mixed-age classrooms (three-year age range), yet most of the Montessori A classrooms seemed to have no more than a two-year age range amongst the students.
• This preschool had a very strange licensing violation, regarding transporting a child between two vehicles while parked on the shoulder of a highway.

Montessori B
Pros:

• Good word-of-mouth recommendations
• Director able to clearly articulate the school's educational philosophy and approach.
• Director specifically emphasized teaching a love of learning over teaching specific skills (unprompted by me)
• Lunch not provided by the school. (See above for why this is a pro for me.)
• Smaller school with just three classrooms total. The director said that it has a "family" feel, where all the kids know each other, and I could definitely sense that when I visited.
• Cheaper than the other two options ($715/month for full-time care, compared to around $850/month for the other two)
• Only licensing violations are paperwork issues (e.g. missing physician information)

Cons:

• Significantly further from our home than the other two options, although still closer than our current sitter. (We actually passed Montessori B every day on the way to our sitter's home.)
• Only takes children starting at age 2. They were willing to take Littles a few weeks shy of her second birthday, but there was no way for her to ease into preschool by starting part-time in the winter/spring.
• Higher student-teacher ratio than the other two preschools, although I believe the class size quoted to me (18 students to two teachers in the "beginner" room) included a significant number of part-timers. It's also worth noting that Montessori does not specifically emphasize low student-teacher ratios, because the idea is that students learn from other students as well as from teachers.
• This may sound silly, but the playground is smaller and has less equipment (especially for kids Littles' age) compared to the other two schools. Also, the other two schools had covered outdoor playgrounds (very important for hot Texas summers!) while Montessori B's playground is uncovered.

Bright Horizons
Pros:

• Some good recommendations from people with children in the infant room at this specific center, and many good recommendations for the Bright Horizons chain in general.
• NAEYC accredited
• Director able to clearly articulate the school's educational philosophy and approach.
• Low student-teacher ratio, and the director specifically mentioned that they keep the ratios below where the corporate office would like them to be because they felt it just worked better that way (even though the corporate office's desired ratios are still well below state maximums)
• Accepts children as young as six weeks, so if we have another child, s/he could go there as well.
• Immediate part-time openings, so we could start Littles two days/week in the winter/spring and then ease into full-time in the summer.
• Smaller center, no "corporate" feel even though it is part of a nationwide chain.

Cons:

• Lunch provided by the school. The menu wasn't bad -- I could definitely live with it -- but I prefer to provide food.
• A licensing violation around not reporting that the infant room had flooded and was unsafe for children. The director explained that they temporarily moved the infants to another room, but still, how can you forget to notify licensing about something like that?

The decision
After visiting all three schools by myself, I was leaning towards Bright Horizons. I liked their curriculum, I liked their teachers and their director, I liked the idea of being able to start Littles part-time at first, I liked the idea of not having to drive so frickin' far to drop her off!

I then went back to visit all three schools with Hubby.

We went to Bright Horizons first, and he walked away saying, "Now I remember why we liked that place so much when we looked at it before." (We had come very close to placing Littles at Bright Horizons back around her first birthday. Full story here.)

We went to Montessori B next. I was really curious to see Hubby's reaction. It was probably the most "unique" of our three options, which can be a good thing or a bad thing!

The director took us into one of the classrooms and spent probably 30 minutes talking to us about Montessori, showing us the various materials available to the students, etc. Hubby seemed interested, but I wasn't sure if he was just being polite. Finally, the director left the room to get something else to show us and Hubby mouthed to me, "I like this place!" After we wrapped up at the school, we went out to lunch to debrief, and Hubby couldn't stop raving about it. He liked it more than Bright Horizons -- and after that second visit, I did as well.

Finally, we visited Montessori A. We had a less-than-impressive tour with one of the staff members. (My initial tour had been with one of the directors.) She admitted that she came from a traditional daycare background and really struggled to explain Montessori concepts and how they were implemented at her school. To give A a fair shake, I did explain to Hubby that the directors at A could talk about Montessori just as articulately as the director at B had done, but it didn't really matter. We were both completely sold on Montessori B.

So... Littles starts at Montessori B on Monday. I'm very excited about it. I think she'll really enjoy being in a larger environment, and I think she'll learn a lot. I am nervous about the transition, and I definitely think the first few weeks will be tough, with lots of tears at drop-off. But hopefully, she'll settle in quickly and start loving it!