$2K per month for pre-K tuition? More proof that California in general, and the feces-covered streets of San Francisco, in particular, is no place for a sane person, or a family, to live. For that money, in most of the country, you can be making house payments on a 3 or 4 bedroom, 2 or 2 1/2 bath home, with front and back yards, in a middle class neighborhood (possibly having occasional dog poop on the sidewalk, but, no discarded needles to collect daily), and pay a church run pre-K staffed by multiple professionals (so, if one gets sick, has an emergency, takes a vacation, etc., your schedule isn’t hosed) and still have $500 per month left over for living expenses, savings, entertainment or whatever else a family wants to spend money on. If you have the disposable income to pay $24K annually for someone to look after your Munchkin, you’d do better to hire a live-in servant (with a Green Card), who can also do shopping, cooking, and light housework, in addition to watching Sesame Street with your kid, knowing that adding another kid won’t double your costs.

Quality preK is between $300 and $400 a month here. Unless you're poor or dont speak English or you have an active-duty or disabled vet parent, in which case it's free, in that the rest of us pay for it.

It's also pretty pointless except as a way to keep kids busy. All differences between kids who go to prek and kids who dont, disappear between grades 2 and 3.

Quality preK is between $300 and $400 a month here. Unless you're poor or dont speak English or you have an active-duty or disabled vet parent, in which case it's free, in that the rest of us pay for it.

It's also pretty pointless except as a way to keep kids busy. All differences between kids who go to prek and kids who dont, disappear between grades 2 and 3.

Wfjag, given the general cost of living differences $2k/mo is fairly normal. And Momof4 is right that the differences don't last. More significantly, this is pretty much the only significant cost to having kids. And it is one that is easily avoided.

(The least they could do is not hate you when they turn 12 or 13.)

Just nature's way of motivating the kids to leave, and the parents to let them.

But you just HAVE to pre-pre-preschool these kids if they're going to win the Rainbow Coalition's Junior Participation Award for Thought Compliance. Otherwise Muffy and Throckmorton will fall behind!

No Gog. If mommy and daddy work then little goggy needs to go somewhere. The police go all crazy and arrest you if you leave your two year old home alone all day. Silly folk.

Most of the stuff in the article is just fluff. These are franchised upscale daycares. Nothing new really. As for Amy's line about politicians shutting this down, they already do that. Look at the requirements to run a daycare. The regs are pretty crazy. Looking at Amy's link at the bottom, the median cost in San Francisco County for a daycare is ~$13k/year, or ~$1k/mo. These guys charge double that. It is an upscale place after all.

" . . . to launch a preschool out her two-bedroom apartment in the East Bay."

I'm glad that she is NOT my neighbor - an apartment is typically NOT a business environment and the neighbors should not have to put up with a business in a residential building.

"No Gog. If mommy and daddy work then little goggy needs to go somewhere."

"Somewhere" could also be defined as "grandma's" or "the babysitter's" or "daycare", couldn't it? And remember, you're under oath.

All over better neighborhoods in the SE, there's something called, "the Montessori School", which sounds like the topic.

So there's a precedent.

Unless public schools are allowed to REMOVE disruptive students AND apply real academic standards, there will be demand for better schools...

"'Somewhere' could also be defined as 'grandma's' or 'the babysitter's' or 'daycare', couldn't it? "

Absolutely. But grandma isn't going to make progress towards regimenting every second of little Junior's life. After all, we want Junior to grow up to be a good little Social Justice Warrior, don't we?

Well, since I am under oath, this is just a franchise daycare. As I said above. Read the actual article. Kids show up at 7:00AM, go home by 6:00PM. Nap time, potty time, ... all standard pre-k daycare.

"But grandma isn't going to make progress towards regimenting every second of little Junior's life."

No evidence of that in the article. As I said, this is standard daycare stuff.

"This free market solution is completely changing the preschool model." - from article

Complete bullshit. Total and solely bullshit. WonderSchool offers all the standard franchising stuff; advertising, licensing, accounting. They also have some cute computer games they've developed. They are no different from a Children's Lighthouse or any other franchise daycare.

I don't know if any of you have kids and have looked at what daycares cost. They say "$1,971 for tuition on average" but that means nothing. Daycares like this charge by the hour. If you don't know what they average hours are to match with that average price you don't have any information at all. They say they run from 7AM-6PM. Those are long hours for most daycares. Mainly because most people aren't willing to spend that much. If 9 hours is their average then the ~2k/year price tag is very cheap. Even here in Texas where things are quite a bit cheaper for 9 hours year round you are looking more at 4-8k. So I don't believe 9 hours is their average. Especially not for San Francisco.

If you've got a grandma willing to do this great. Babysitter? What bullshit is that? Babysitters are a few hours in the evening. This is a full day daycare. If momma is willing and can afford to do this herself also great. But remember ~30% of kids in the US live in a single parent home. Most employers frown on taking the kids into work.

Also take into mind the US average for education spending is ~12k/year. That has largely the same function, keeping kids occupied while their parents work.

"Daycares like this charge by the hour. "

Like a babysitter, say.

Or circuit board assemblers. What's your point.

" What's your point."

Why?

I'm feeling very zen right now. Your point is why and I have no idea what to do with a question/statement like that. Well done.

@MomOf4: I wonder if the reason the pre-K difference disappears a few years into school is that the schools hold the kids back to the same level as the rest.

Why I'm not _certain_ of that: children's advancement may be limited by their nervous system development. E.g., on the average, boys get the fine motor skills for cursive writing a few years later than girls - so (at least long ago when I was in elementary school) schools would start teaching cursive writing when only about half the students were ready for it. And then they did not come back and go over it again when the boys were ready. The result was that nearly all the girls had beautiful handwriting, but even in high school many of the boys, including me, could barely manage a semi-legible scrawl. (I can _draw_ letters quite well in several styles, including cursive, but at 1/10 the speed - much too slow for taking notes or for an essay question on a test.)