Berkeley New School or Aquatic Park School?
We are trying to decide on a preschool for this fall for our daughter who will be 2 in April. We have two great options (the New School and Aquatic Park School), which is wonderful, but having trouble deciding between them!
We like the outdoor space better at New School, but the indoor space better at APS. We like that they have more age mixing at APS, but it also seems like that happens less due to COVID anyway. We prefer the no masks required policy at New School (I appreciate why APS has it, but I am not looking forward to wrestling a 2-year-old into wearing a mask). We like the Reggio philosophy at APS and APS seems a bit more driven by child interests to determine their projects, which we also like. New School is a bit closer to our house, but it's 5 minutes vs. 10 minutes so not a big difference. New School seems more integrated into the Berkeley community, which we like since we live in Berkeley. New School also seems to have teachers who've been there longer.
Thoughts from any parents who chose between these two schools would be really helpful! What factors did you weigh and why did you decide how you did? Thanks!
Parent Replies
We are a New School family. One big advantage to New School is the after school program, which your child can enjoy after finishing preschool (I know it's a long way away, but the years pass quickly in a way!). They are both good schools.
APS is an amazing school and community. The parents are really engaged and interested in building community.
My son is in third grade and still friends with kids he went to APS with. My youngest was there during COVID so some of those community building opportunities were diminished but they were still there. I looked at the New School also for my youngest but we opted for APS.
APS really has an Reggio focus and as the kids get older I appreciated how the level of involvement in the child-driven interests also evolved. It was child-led but provided really power skills that were useful for the transition to kindergarten. The teachers are really interested in the craft of teaching. I loved that the kids go on walks in the neighborhood and work their way up to taking the bus. It's just an amazing place!
Hey Laura, Happy to chat about our experience at APS. Huge fans and have a current 3 year-old (birthday today!) in their Dolphin classroom. She started at around 2.5 yo. My 7 yo graduated from there and attended starting at 3yo until 5yo
No experience with New School unfortunately.
Feel free to contact me.
Ritu
Real talk: Have you been offered a spot at either/both? My personal experience with APS was that the admission process feels very disorganized and/or popularity-contest like. They lost our application twice despite us paying the enrollment fee and attending multiple tours/info sessions, and in over three years have yet to receive even a status update on where our application is. If you’re still at the “where to apply” phase versus the “accepting a spot” phase, I’d cast a wider net and worry about choosing later if/when you’re offered a spot.
Former APS Parent here. If you can get in, and go for it.
The children did learn letters, numbers and some handwriting skills, but their main focus was centered on social interactions and student lead interests. Upset your classmate, let's do a check-in. Your kid likes volcanos? They'll be reading all about magma and making baking soda volcanos. Little Timmy likes rockets? Next week a freaking NASA Astronaut was on-hand talking about the science experiments on the space station. This ain't no daycare. They even created class specific instagram accounts, so we have lots of pictures to remember his time there.
My current 7yo really enjoyed Aquatic Park School and made a bucket of good friends, which was a key concern for my somewhat shy, only child. I’d say it worked well, as the dude made a surprise visit recently and beamed with pride as he read to the class.
Unfortunately we had to deal with Covid. We missed out on the family mixer events that we’d heard great things about. APS rose provided a list of activities/experiments (ie. create an obstacle course, build a fort, will it float?) They also had a slack channel and zoom classes, which started out exactly like the disaster you would think, but evolved.
There were virtual and in-person communal meetings where concerns could be voiced, and touched on how to discuss all the social tensions going on in the world. Along that vein, Black and Latino populations were underrepresented at the time. When we brought this up it was acknowledged that they do struggle to find students to fill this gap. That said, the staff went out of their way to include African and Indigenous, as well as Asian culture into their teaching.