Share your Cambridge public pre-school experiences

March 6, 2013 7:17 AM

So it's time for us to put our son on the pre-school waiting list in the City of Cambridge. Except we are close to three possible schools and there are no ranks, no preferences - if the school is on the list and there is space, you must take it. We don't know anyone whose kids have gone to any of these preschools, Morse, Kings, King Open, etc. So throwing this out to askmefi: if you have any experiences with preschools in Cambridge, MA, please share! I am particularly concerned about provider availability to children, sensitivity to allergy/nutrition concerns, diversity, gender roles enforcement ("You can't cry, you're a boy." "Girls can't play with cars.") and relationships among the parents of the children.
posted by Shusha to education (4 answers total)

I can speak to this with the experience of enrolling kids in Boston public schools...not knowing which one felt most comfortable for a family.

The best thing to do is to ask for a tour of the schools; you need to see them with your own eyes. If the school balks at this, then you've got an answer right there.
posted by kinetic at 7:21 AM on March 6

Hello it's Cambridge! I don't think schools can even exist in Cambridge without taking all of that as doctrine. However FWIW. Morse is in a neighborhood closest to MIT and has a lot of MIT Grad students and faculty AKA Cambridgeport. Cambridgeport is otherwise fully gentrified. King is directly across the street from Harvard's Grad school housing, AKA Riverside. Riverside is also known for having a majority of the remaining blue-collar Cantabridgidians.
posted by Gungho at 8:27 AM on March 6

So the lottery with weighting for proximity and preference has changed? The conventional wisdom a few years ago was to enter the lottery for PK, and then get another shot at the lottery for K if you're unhappy. (Or perhaps you're entering the process off cycle and therefore in the assignment/waitlist situation?)

I toured a number of Cambridge schools a few years ago, but opted for private school for a variety of reasons, so have only broad-brush-stroke impressions of them. I agree with kinetic that touring the schools is a good idea. Ask your questions and see how the teachers and administrators answer. Better than a tour, IMO, though is to get the names of parents with older students who can give you the straight dope. Parents with kids in grades 3-5 would be ideal because the early childhood experience will be fresher for them, and they'll have their heads up about the next few grades 6-8 leading into HS, too.

I'm not sure what you mean by provider availability to children, but I think allergy concerns are probably well sorted. Diversity is sort of par for the course here in Cambridge, but you may find yourself in pockets of diversity a la King, which has a Mandarin program, or Graham and Parks with its historical French traditions. All of these felt to me like good additions to a baseline education, and not elements that detracted from core academics. Anti-bias in terms of gender roles, unfortunately, hasn't kept pace with other sensitivities, IMO. I say this not because Cambridge schools in particular are bad at it, but it isn't a life or death question the way allergies are, it isn't part of the landscape the way diversity is, and it's not something educators can shift to the foreground in place of core curriculum. Neither do teachers have support to diverge from the standard curriculum playbook much at all. So I think gender messages are something highly dependent on the attitudes of a particular teacher or classroom. I will say that even at the very diverse Harvard-affiliated preschool my kids attended, which had a number of lesbian and male PK teachers, gender messages were surprisingly and disappointingly conventional. If this is important to you, it's a place you will have to lead from at home as parents, and as members of whatever school community you find yourself in.

Finally, for data to complement first-hand impressions and opinions, you can dive into some of the school profiles. (For "Type" select "Public School District,", then the More button, leave "Characteristics" and "Grades" blank, then choose "Cambridge" to get a list of all the Camb public schools. Click on a school name, and then there are tabs to see the student mix, teacher mix, and academic performance.)

MeMail me if you want to talk more, and maybe I can connect you to some CPS parents.
posted by cocoagirl at 1:20 PM on March 6

I am asking specifically about PRE-school. There is no lottery, just a waiting list. There are only six public pre-school programs in Cambridge.
posted by Shusha at 4:11 AM on March 7