Last fall we knew there was a chance we would be moving back to New York over the summer. We knew Antonia would need a preschool to go to in the fall. But there were enough balls in the air that the move east was not definite. It became apparent that we had to find preschools in both New York and Los Angeles at the same time! That search not only yielded a school for Antonia to go to this fall, but also had a bi-product that we feel is worth sharing.
We hadn't lived in New York for 2 years and we had missed all the conversations with our friends about their school experiences. In LA we were having the normal conversations with other parents in the same boat, but our conversations were brief and limited. Our network in LA was in its infancy. One highly touted book for Los Angeles proved a disappointment, covering just over 40 schools in the entire city (we found over 40 in our area alone...)
In order to wrap our heads around the options (and the various dates and cutoff ages) we needed to do some research. As a result we created 2 Google spreadsheets with as many options as we could find within a reasonable distance from our homes in both cities.
Perhaps a little obsessive, maybe a little type-A, whatever the provenance, it became clear that NOBODY should have to do the same research. So I have scrubbed the spreadsheets of our personal information, made them public, and have handed over editing capabilities to new parents in both cities.
The lists are currently limited to the areas we were considering, but could easily be expanded. In New York we searched around our place in Williamsburg: downtown to north Brooklyn and some Manhattan options, mostly near 14th street (with some exceptions largely for comparison)
In Los Angeles we looked around Korea town, Los Feliz, Silvelake, Glendale, Echo Park, Eagle Rock and Pasadena.
Here they are:
Rather than include thoughts and commentary, a comprehensive list with as many facts as possible seems better than getting into the murky territory of endorsements and reviews. Most people know what they are looking for.
Please feel free to share the lists, and if you know a good person (new parent) to contribute to it, please recommend them. If there are any programmers who want to turn this into some kind of Wiki database, even better!
