Preschool Application & Information Checklist: Fill & Download for Free

The number one thing that is causing people to leave the Bay Area is the cost of living and quality of life for mid-career adults. I have known a lot of people leaving in that age range for systemic Bay Area problems.Housing: particularly buying a home, but also rent stability. When you hit your late 20s to late 30s you want to be able to buy house for the stability in raising a family and also for the tax incentives. Housing prices are beyond the reach of most moderately successful people. It requires family help or very high levels of success.Lack of space: Even if you can afford a place to live, many parts of the Bay Area are pretty dense and the houses are pretty small. You’ll end up with 1,200 sq ft houses on 5,000 sq ft lots on busy streets.Child care and education costs: The child care costs can be very high in the Bay Area. Good day cares are really expensive. Preschool applications are a contact sport. Schools vary pretty wildly in the Bay Area. A lot of people send their kids to private schools because of it.Commuting time: The traffic in the Bay Area has gotten insane. The commuting times have doubled since the Great Recession. A short commute is 30 minutes each way. Lots of people are commuting multiple hours. Typical commuting speeds are 10–25 mph. So you can be 10 miles from your office and spend 45 minutes commuting each way. Commuting 5 miles across SF can take 90 minutes on public transport. This just degrades quality of life.No family support: Most people in the Bay Area who are leaving aren’t from the Bay Area. This means they don’t have parents, aunts or uncles, grandparents, or siblings to help with child raising. It means that you’re reliant on babysitters. I know many people who have spent every evening and night with their toddler since they were born.Loss of Bay Area culture: The Bay Area has dramatically changed since I arrived in 1998. The tail ends of the counterculture movement of the 1960s were still around. That is all gone now. It is all-tech-all-the-time. People are rude and status driven. My wife was pushed aside while she was 9 months pregnant by typical startup bros. All the people that used to go to NYC or DC for power and money are now coming to SF bringing that culture.

Check out KidAdmit - Preschool applications made easy. Getting into your top school made easier., you can search by Reggio-Emilia programs to help you narrow it down. Disclaimer: I am the founder of this site but I created it to help parents manage the preschool application process in San Francisco. It's based on my own personal crazy experience of enrolling my son intro preschool.

If you are very interested in these preschools, I would encourage you to apply at birth. However the majority of preschools take application one year before desired enrollment so keep an open mind and definitely apply to 5 preschools in case you cannot get into ones with a long waitlist.If you need help managing the preschool process in one place, I created a website KidAdmit - Preschool applications made easy. Getting into your top school made easier. to help San Francisco families with the admissions process. You can search all sorts of programs and know their admission process. I created it from my own frustrating experience of enrolling my son into preschool. Good luck!