The Search Begins

Working From Home

These are the notes from our preschool search in the City of Long Beach for our 2 year old daughter. My hope is that by writing this, I can help another parent who is undergoing a similar search. This document will be static so it would be great if others chime in with their photos and experiences as time goes on so that an accurate picture of the schools can be seen.

First, a disclaimer. These are all just my opinions. There are certain things my husband and I are looking for in a preschool and I want to be clear that this document will be full of lots of biased, unsubstantiated half-impressions from my own brain. I am not wishing to offend anyone with my criticism, but in the interest of keeping it real I will tell you the good and the horrible I find along the way. That being said I’m willing to bet that most moms are looking for the same kinds of things – a nurturing, welcoming, caring environment for their kids, though not everyone shares my obsession. There will always be people who use preschools as a place to keep their kids safe while they are at work, and do the choosing by simply googling the nearest center, calling to see if they have room, taking a perfunctory tour to ensure that there are no sharp objects lying about or child molesters hiding in the shadows, confirm that the ABCs will be sung, and sign the paperwork. There is nothing wrong with this approach. We simply have different criteria. I will also say that as an environmental educator, the physical environment of a school is very very important to me. Bright clean spaces, access to outdoors, healthy food, and well-made wooden toys make an impression on me and I’m most likely to rate a school with these features higher than one without. I’m also a sucker for a garden since I know the positive learning impact growing food and plants can have on a child so schools with gardens ranked high in my mind too.

Criteria. We are looking for a bright, cheerful, nurturing space for our daughter full of engaging, well-made toys, caring staff, and lots of space for play and exploration. We’re looking for a school that will provide her with a variety of experiences and a somewhat structured, mentally stimulating program. A school with no program where kids just wander around all day is not what we’re looking for. Our daughter is biracial, and we’re also looking for diversity at the school. A school where 75% of the students are all of any one race won’t rank very highly.

In the interest of full disclosure our preschool budget is $800 a month. That will get you a lot in some neighborhoods and barely anything at all in others. This will help you to see why we chose to tour the places we chose.  I’m also looking for a full time, year-round program. I am not about to go through this all again when summer rolls around for a program that is only open during the school year. Ain’t nobody got time for that! Even though I work from home a couple of days each week I’m looking for full time for those days when I have to go into the office on a work-at-home day because there’s an event or big project coming up. The idea is to have full time status even if we only use it on the days 2 or 3 I’m in the office. That way, I’m not scrambling for coverage when things get busy at and I’m working more than usual.

Automatic disqualifications. Because there are so many preschools in Long Beach, we had to eliminate some at the beginning. These eliminations were completely made with my biases in mind. Here’s how we chose which schools to tour.

1.            We did a google search (yep, real technical) of the area in which we’re interested. This was Long Beach – south of the 405, east of the 710, and west of the 605 with a few outliers. 
2. .          We eliminated any center that took infants since we were looking for more of a preschool atmosphere as opposed to a day care atmosphere. 
3.       Also eliminated; churches, in-home daycares, and chains like Kindercare (whoops , there went my advertising on this page). Converted homes were ok as long as no one was actually living there.
4.         I checked websites. If the business did not take the time to put together at least the bare bones of a website then they were immediately eliminated.

Did I possibly eliminate a wonderful, high quality center with these criteria? Maybe. I’ll never know and I’m ok with that.

We also tried to avoid the wonderful but too expensive. We toured and joined the wait list for Little Owl Preschool and we absolutely loved it. I was in eco geek heaven at that school. But $1300 a month was just too much even though I’m sure that technically we could swing it. Same with Edgewater Preschool. We liked this school pretty well though we weren’t as impressed with it as its $1050 a month price tag would have you believe.

Also out were schools with wacky schedules. We really like Maple Village Waldorf school but as a working mom (even one who has a very flexible schedule) I cannot pick my child up from school at 1:00 pm every day. So I’ll let the stay-at-home moms have that one and keep it moving.  Same with Belmont Heights Church Preschool* 3 hour a day “preschool enrichment program.” I need real options for my very real work schedule. I work Monday – Friday all day, but I get to work from home on Mondays and Fridays.On the days I do go into the office I leave home at 6:30 am and leave work by 3:00 pm so I’m home around 4:00 pm every day. Because I have so much flexibility at work it’s so discouraging when even my schedule won’t work with a preschool. These schools seem to cater to stay at home moms or moms with even more flexibility and I had to cross them and their wacky schedules off of my list.

We'll try to post as we go along and add photos when we can too. Hopefully you'll follow along.

*A church! It came highly recommended from a friend so we at least took a look at their website.