Preschool Wars

I am not sure how it works in the rest of our fine country, but preschool here in Park Slope Brooklyn is something you begin to talk about after you are safely out of your first trimester of pregnancy. Getting into a preschool in this neighborhood is akin to getting into Harvard--shoot, an Ivy might be easier (after all, I got into one...). But preschool in the Slope is full of ass-kissing, paying fees to apply, getting financially butt-raped IF you get in, and then still continuously second guessing your decision to send your kid to this or that preschool. It's discussed ad nauseam on the playground, over brunch, at the gym, in whispers between yoga mats...It's sick.

Alexandra is in daycare, and it's a wonderful. It's not the super chic daycare of the 'hood, but she loves it, is learning so much, and actually cries when I come to get her many days of the week b/c she doesn't want to leave her friends. We have never questioned our daycare's integrity, but living in this area makes you wonder if maybe, just maybe, there's something better out there.

So we looked. We decided to go for the preschool that's literally 5 steps from our house. If we're going to pay so much more, convenience had better play a part. So I went on the tour. My response: "Meh." The classrooms looked like every elementary school I have been to, but elementary school is FREE. Then we went on the playdate interview and the woman in charge spelled Alexandra's name wrong. Seriously? Alexandra? I mean, it's not a challenging name. Oh, and btw, they misspelled a really simple word like "street" in their pamphlet. And one last thing--they used Comic Sans as the font in their pamphlet. Gag.

After all that, our $75 was already in (application fee, you know, preschool fee = same as college application fee) and we got the letter in the mail that we had been waitlisted. You know what you have to do if you're waitlisted? Call. Every. Day. And. Beg. Eff that.

So we're staying at our daycare one more year. Nico starts this summer. And I'm more than cool with that. If my kid doesn't get into Harvard b/c she didn't get into this preschool, I'm totally cool with that, too.