San Francisco is a city of compromise. When it comes to housing, for example, unless you’re part of the ultra-wealthy, you’ll have to give something up. Maybe several somethings — space, money, safety, sun, accessibility. The longer you live here, the more you accept this as our way of life. Those who have trouble accepting it tend to live here miserably for a few more years, telling themselves that the hip cocktail bars and the access to redwoods are worth it. Then they move to Portland or Salt Lake City or Ohio.
Preschool is no different, but it took me a long time to learn that. There’s an endless amount of jokes about how you need to apply for preschool while your child is in utero and an endless amount of articles that debunk that myth. As a stay-at-home-mom, I didn’t think any of it applied to me. I was going to spend my days reading Baby Einstein books to my son, shuffling him to music class and gymnastics, exploring nature on sunny days and eating organic snacks. There was nothing preschool could give him that I couldn’t.
Eighteen months in, I desperately needed help. Being a stay-at-home parent is more than a job; it’s round-the-clock work. Middle-of-the-night wake-ups. Dinnertime meltdowns. Three naps, one nap, no naps. We have no family nearby, and while my husband is a supportive partner, he works full-time and then some. Even worse, when you’re the primary parent, your brain never turns off. I needed somewhere to bring my child where I could drop him off and walk away and breathe. And maybe shower.
I put out a cry for help on Nextdoor, got one recommendation and went to an open house the next week. They took kids at 18 months (no potty training needed!). The operation was small — just 12 kids and three teachers. They made and fed him a snack and lunch. It was all outdoors in a backyard, with a fort and a tree and a paved area for bike riding, but with an option for going indoors during heavy rain. It was walkable from our house. We could start as low as two half days a week, and they had spots open. We signed up that day.
Clearly, the nightmare of preschool hunting was a myth.
For one year, we lived in a preschool state of honeymoon bliss. It wasn’t cheap. It was affordable for us only because it was just eight hours a week. Then this past December, just as I was contemplating increasing the time to three days a week to actually work on my own career, they announced that they were closing. In a month.
In true San Francisco fashion, the house the school was hosted in was being sold by the director’s parents, who owned it. Apparently, they could not come to an agreement on the price — the house is in a desirable neighborhood, and no one gets rich by running a preschool. The parents must have really wanted that nest egg. When I asked (begged) the director if they would be looking for a place at which to reopen next fall, she shook her head.
“We’re moving to Ohio.”
As one does.
Cue the full-scale preschool search, spreadsheets and all.
It was immediately obvious that we were way behind. Forget the possibility of getting someone to take him now. Everywhere we visited was enrolling for September—nine months away. In a flurry over Christmas, I scheduled open houses at every place I could find that was within a reasonable distance, at a reasonable price, with reasonable Yelp reviews.
There is a fairly well-known website, Winnie.com, dedicated entirely to helping parents navigate preschools in San Francisco. According to them, there are 356 preschools in San Francisco, roughly 77 percent of which are in centers and the rest in homes. Also according to them, less than half are usually fully enrolled for the upcoming school year.
So this should be no problem, right?
The Forest for the Trees
The very first place we visited was a forest school with immediate openings. And the very first thing I learned is that the term “preschool” seems to be relative. The teacher/owner told us how they spent their days roaming around Golden Gate Park. My son watched a heron with the other kids. The teacher said they didn’t really do circle time or anything formal, but that she “brings books along” in case the kids want to read them. They had no rain plan. She shrugged. “The kids wear rain gear. We cancel if it’s too bad.”
The second thing we learned is that if a school has immediate openings, there’s usually a reason.
The price, too, was surprising, about the same as the other programs we looked at. But with no rent to pay, shouldn’t it be less?
We continued around the park with them to the horse paddock, where the kids, ages two to four, ran up to the fence and proceeded to try to pet, poke and pat the horse standing there.
The horse proceeded to try to check to see if anyone had food. With his teeth.
The kids squealed and yanked their hands back.
I held my son’s hands firmly by his side.
“We probably shouldn’t put our hands in there,” the teacher said gently, distracted by her clingy two-year-old. The kids ignored her.
“This seems like a really bad idea!” I said loudly. I have no problem bossing other people’s kids around. “Everyone should step back from the fence.”
The horse lunged, stuck its nose through the wide bars and tried to take a chunk out of the assistant teacher’s rear end. She screamed and jumped off the ledge.
I hauled my son and another kid away by the backs of their jackets.
“Everyone, back!” the teacher finally shouted. She turned to say something to us, perhaps an explanation, but my husband, son and I had already retreated to the tree line. We shouted back over our shoulders, “OK, bye. Thanks for your time.”
The second thing we learned is that if a school has immediate openings, there’s usually a reason. Safety was not something we were willing to compromise on.
The next forest school we checked out was an entirely different experience. We met in a lovely redwood grove while the teacher explained how she has a new theme every few weeks, based on children’s stories; that by the third week the kids would be acting it out like a play; and that their heavy-rain plan was that she had a teacher’s pass to the California Academy of Sciences.
Yes! Our energetic son clearly thrives in the outdoors. He walked up and down logs, singing to himself while we chatted. It was at the very top of our price range and was a solid 20-minute drive from our house. We asked if we could apply.
“Absolutely,” she told us. “I might have one spot in the fall. Although I’m already boy heavy.” Which was the nice way of saying, “OK, bye. Thanks for your time.”
The List Gets Longer…and More Expensive
Next, we focused on more traditional preschools. One of them had immediate openings and was within walking distance from our house. They even had a mandarin class! But the director never bothered to speak directly to our son, and seeing the kids sitting at tables under fluorescent lights was deeply uninspiring.
Another school was just one neighborhood over, albeit in a neighborhood I didn’t particularly want to walk in. But the building was brand new, with a huge outdoor area, and the directors were so much fun that we decided that the rest didn’t matter. My husband almost asked them out to drinks.
Except they didn’t do half days, which was what we wanted.
“You can pick him up anytime, of course!”
Let me rephrase: it was what we needed.
San Francisco preschool is expensive—like, insanely so. It’s tough to find direct comparison numbers, and, of course, costs vary by type of school, exact location, how many hours you want and the number of siblings (you generally get a “discount” for more hours and more siblings). But according to a state-by-state survey on Business Broker, Washington, DC, comes in at the highest, with an average of $3,000 a month for two kids. According to Winnie.com, San Francisco averages around $1,650 a month for one kid. So it appeared that we were neck and neck with the most expensive market in the US.
And yet I was rarely surprised by the costs. We quickly figured out that very few places owned the building they were in. So some quick back-of-the-napkin figures could give me some easy guesses as to why tuition was so high: rent/mortgage + a living wage for the teachers (who need to pay SF rent themselves) + benefits + licensing fees + insurance + administration costs = the cost of doing business in San Francisco.
No one is getting wealthy from educating toddlers (well, except at the very upper levels — tuition there, usually European language-immersion schools, reaches $34,000 or more a year, which is more than what a person being paid minimum wage would make in a year, at just $31,000 a year). The decampment of the owners of our first school to Ohio proves that.
As far as I can tell, it comes down to rent. The rent most schools must pay must be enormous. Then they have to meet San Francisco’s $15 minimum wage for their employees, the highest in the country — mainly because we have some of the highest rents in the country. According to Glassdoor.com, preschool teachers are paid an average of $18 an hour. So despite the costs, teachers in our city are not particularly well paid, even if they make 30 percent more than what teachers in other places make.
At $1,650 a month for full-time tuition, that averages to something like $10 an hour out of pocket. This does not include holidays, which most preschools take off according to the San Francisco School District schedule, and may or may not include winter and summer breaks.
At the meeting, dozens of adults milled around. I wanted them to like me. Whom should I talk to? How should I start a conversation? Should I eat the snacks or keep my hands free?
When you’re looking for full-time care, you do get a bit of a break price-wise, much like buying in bulk at Costco. Because I could afford only part-time, I realized I would be paying a premium — the schools l looked at were averaging $15 an hour.
When it came to preschools, we couldn’t have it all. What would I give up? We could afford the fluorescent-lights place and walk there. Or we could squeeze our budget and travel time and go to the nice forest school (which did eventually offer us a place). I could hustle and find a full-time job again so that we could send him to the full-time school we loved. But most of my work had been as a retail monkey, for which I was paid barely above minimum wage. It was one of the reasons why I decided to stay home. Even my last, highest-paying job was only $22 an hour before tax, and they had made it quite clear at the time that they were not interested in letting me work part-time or occasionally from home, or offering me flexible hours, or doing any of the other things that make it anything less than incredibly stressful to be the primary caregiver of a young child.
Let’s Cooperate
During all this, I was on a waitlist to attend the open house at a co-op preschool just a little over a mile from our house. Not a waitlist for enrollment—a waitlist for the privilege of attending an informational meeting. And you’re not allowed to apply until you go.
Just a few days before, I got an email saying I was in. I actually had no idea what a co-op was at that time or what to expect. My last experience with any kind of co-op was being part of one at a grocery store, for which you were expected to work a few hours a week in exchange for access to vegetables at what was basically the same price as a regular store.
At the meeting, dozens of adults milled around. I wanted them to like me. This was not an easy school to get into, from what I understood. But whom should I talk to? How should I start a conversation? Should I eat the snacks or keep my hands free? Should I hang my jacket on a full-size chair so I don’t get stuck sitting on a knee-crunching child-size one? Having no answers, I wandered around the rooms, acting fascinated by drawers labeled “Glitter Sand” and “Snowflakes” and nodded thoughtfully over the gross motor-skills room.
When the meeting began, one board member / parent launched into telling us how much work a co-op is. You teach once a week. You have a family job. You fundraise. You provide snacks. You clean and work on the weekends.
Then another parent came in and told us how amazing it is. You’re part of your child’s education. The cost is delightfully low — $150 a month if you’re a parent-teacher, $450 if you’re not. You get to know your kid’s friends. You find lifelong friends in the other parents.
And by the end of this meeting, I was totally sold on this time-share — I mean co-op. I have no family nearby, a limited amount of friends with kids and even fewer friends who stay home with their kids and can spend time with us during the week. I wanted to apply my way into this community. And I’m not gonna lie — I went a little starry-eyed over that $150 number.
But if we decided to go there, my son could attend only three half days a week. You are required to teach one day a week for at least one semester, which would mean only two half days a week to myself. I would still be required to hold a co-op job, bring snacks, fundraise and show up for meetings and maintenance days. It is possible that these responsibilities would eat up the rest of my kid-free time, and my freelance career would continue to falter.
In the end, I decided that it involved the easiest thing to give up — my time.
At least I would have time with other adults and no kid during those meetings and maintenance days. I would, I hoped, learn a few things. My son would get the social time he needs. We would continue to have enough money to go on vacation once in a while, and I would get two more years of spending time with my son before (happily) sending him off to (free!) public school.
I was lucky to have options—I know that. And the one good thing about San Francisco preschools is that whatever flavor of school you want, it’s out there. But economic realities mean limited choices for most parents. It means teachers in a mostly female labor force who struggle to find truly well-paid work. It means preschools and private schools that close, never to reopen. It means parents finding creative answers, like banding together in co-ops, to find connection, support and education in a city with no answers to endlessly rising prices.
