January 12, 2003
By VICTORIA GOLDMAN
To enter the 92nd Street Y Nursery School, parent and child pass through a large granite and marble lobby. Beyond the Felix M. Warburg Lounge, beneath an exquisitely stenciled ceiling, they wait in a long line behind a red velvet rope for the special elevator that carries them to the sixth floor. When the shiny brass door opens, an impressive display case filled with ribbon designs and candleholders made by the children greets them.
No ordinary handprint art here. Around the corner hangs a 6-by-8-foot American flag of canvas, foam and pasta set in a plexiglass three-dimensional frame reminiscent of a
Jasper Johns.
''Flags are fascinating to 5-year-olds,'' explained Lynn Rosen, the teacher. ''While the children were working on it, they'd break into song, singing or humming either 'It's a
Grand Old Flag' or 'America the Beautiful.''' The cutting, painting and gluing took three months. A parent paid $1,800 for the special frame, and a little extra to have it carried up six flights.
Welcome to one of Manhattan's most exclusive nurseries, founded in 1938 with just three classes. Now there are 10. But to get in one of them without some prior connection is almost impossible -- just ask Jack B. Grubman, the former Citigroup securities analyst who sent an incriminating e-mail message suggesting he swapped a favorable stock rating for help getting his 2-year-old twins into the Y (in the form of a $1 million donation from his boss, Sanford I. Weill). A motive is obvious. New York's top-tier nurseries can be feeder schools to the ''right'' kindergarten, and then Trinity and Dalton and upward to
Harvard, and they offer the ''right'' social element.
But while the world might sniff at such admissions shenanigans and five-figure tuitions, educators do not disagree with the parents' priorities. Study after study shows the importance of a good preschool. In the latest, the National Institute for Early Education
Research reports that children in high-quality programs make roughly $143,000 more over their lifetime than the control group -- and they're less likely to smoke, too.
Manhattan's top schools for 2- to 5-year-olds offer some of the finest education a preschooler can get, with on-staff child psychologists, movement and music specialists, artists in residence, custom-tailored programs and computers. Children enjoy individual attention from directors with 20 years' experience and multiple degrees in education and early childhood development. Classes have three teachers for 11 to 20 children. To insure matriculation at a good private kindergarten, most have on-site testing for the ERB, the preschool equivalent of the SAT.

''Never say nursery, it's early childhood,'' admonishes Marlene Barron, head of the West
Side Montessori School since 1979, a Ph.D. and author of seven books.
Here's what you get at five of Manhattan's most desirable preschools, for up to $15,000 a year (or, for extended days, almost $18,000).
The Episcopal School
Enrollment: 220
Cost: $8,788 (age 2) to $9,812 (age 3 to 5) for five half days
On East 69th Street near Park Avenue, Episcopal was one of the first preschools to join the National Association of Independent Schools -- ''that changed the way early childhood education was thought about,'' said Betty Baxter, who directed the school for
14 years beginning in the early 70's, when bras were burning and a critical mass of moms entered the workplace. Not coincidentally, more youngsters needed a place to go, and playtime began to evolve into education.
If the icon of preschool before Dr. Baxter was a little old lady in a kilt, now she had a doctorate from Columbia's Teachers College and wore a Chanel suit and pumps. Dr.
Baxter hired only professional educators, lured by competitive salaries. ''Episcopal was one of the first nursery schools interested in credentials,'' said a competitor, Lydia
Spinelli, director of the Brick Church School, who also has a Columbia doctorate.
Formality permeates. Good manners are stressed. Teachers are addressed with honorifics
-- Mr. Jones, Ms. Smith. Children must wait for everyone in the class to sit down before starting snacks. They shake hands, usually with the director, on arrival and departure.
Episcopal tries to maintain a balance between support and challenge. But to ready children for competitive elementary grades, the curriculum emphasizes the latter, especially prereading and phonics. The school has a director of expressive arts -- a storyteller, who has been with the school 15 years. He writes books and music and asks the children to spin a globe and put their finger on a country, and then he tells them a story about that country. It's all part of a cultural-awareness program that might find little hands helping tie-dye saris or comparing spices from different countries.
High-profile parents join their children, regardless of religious affiliation, at a weekly chapel service that has become an Upper East Side social event. The Episcopal School is where the children of Pia and Christopher Getty, Harvey and Eve Weinstein, Jane and
Jann Wenner, Ronald O. Perelman and Patricia Duff, Jerry Della Femina and Judy Licht, and Edgar Jr. and Clarissa Bronfman first learned to socialize like their parents.
The best nurseries get up to 350 applications for 35 to 60 spots. At Episcopal, applications become available on the Wednesday after Labor Day and are gone in two days; everyone else winds up wait-listed for one. ''It's the place where you can be with

your own kind, or the kind you want to be with,'' said Mitchell Moss, a social scientist and director of the Taub Urban Research Center at New York University. ''Nursery school is the first chance parents have to brand-name their child.''
92nd Street Y Nursery School
Enrollment: 175
Cost: $7,300 (age 2 1/2, two half days) to $14,400 (age 4 and 5, five full days)
To teach her charges about Jackson Pollock, Beryl Roth, who has a double master's in education and fine arts from Columbia University, first explained his techniques, the splattering and dripping -- the kinds of things young children like to do. She then draped the room in plastic and paper. She turned on the jazz that Pollock listened to while painting. The 4-year-olds swayed to the music, throwing and dripping the paint as they flung their arms. The final canvas looked, to the layman's eye, almost indistinguishable from the master's. As their handiwork was pinned up for display one morning in mid-
November, they sang ''This Land Is Your Land.''
Art and song play prominently at this Upper East Side preschool, which is more relaxed than Episcopal. According to its Statement of Philosophy, the Y ''strives to facilitate children's social, emotional, physical and intellectual growth through a curriculum attuned to the individual child's unique pattern of development,'' with an emphasis on
''creative expression through hands-on experiences.''
Indeed, the children grow herbs, flowers and vegetables in their own garden. They play
''outdoors'' rain or shine under a retractable roof. In the Red Room (each class is named for a color), children compose a newsletter, the Red Room Reporter, with book review, letter of the week and joke of the week. In the Rainbow Room, 3- and 4-year-olds learn about the science of balance and weight on a life-size scale they help assemble. Each child sits on one end while classmates put blocks on the other until the scale is balanced.
They graph the number of blocks they need for each child, learn math concepts and also how to work cooperatively.
''It's a visual way to introduce fractions as well,'' Barry Goldberg, a ceramicist, sculptor and singer who has taught at the Y for 20 years, explained to a visitor. He showed off a project on what he called ''water displacement'' -- how sponges work and how liquidfilled tubes make music.
On this morning, the day the contents of the Grubman e-mail message made headlines,
Nancy Schulman, the director, was busy counseling a group of mothers on parenting techniques. (She recommends Wendy Mogel's ''Blessing of a Skinned Knee: Using
Jewish Teachings to Raise Self-Reliant Children.'') With the news media gathered outside the building, Mr. Grubman stood at the Red Room door, watching silently as his daughter was comforted by a teacher: she had gotten a red spot on her pants.

Since that day, the admissions process at the Y has become legendary: how parents hire help to hit redial the day tour appointments are scheduled (it can take six hours to reach the school by phone), first come first served for 300 spots. No tour, no application.
At some elite schools, like Episcopal and Christ Church Day School on Park Avenue, parents and children meet individually with the director and perhaps a few teachers for an interview. Other schools schedule play-date ''interviews.'' At the Y, roughly five children, parents and teachers interact together for about 45 minutes. Considering toddlers' unpredictability, the process can wreak havoc on parents' already frazzled nerves.
One parent, an investment banker, took her 20-month-old son on four interviews, including City and Country in Greenwich Village, which also has elementary grades.
''The head of the lower school, the head of admissions and several teachers were observing and taking notes on a clipboard,'' she recalled. ''I wondered, 'What are they looking for? What are they writing down while he's playing at the water table?'''
''Of course, you're nervous that your child will have a breakdown,'' she added. ''But every child was sweet and nice, just an angel, and I didn't see how they could distinguish between children.''
What they are looking for, directors say, is a 2-year-old who can ''separate'' -- no excessive leg hanging on parents or caretakers -- and who will not bop other children on the head.
''Some 2-year-olds show up with a c.v. attached to their application,'' said Mitten
Wainwright, former director of the Park Avenue Christian Day School, a solid nursery school with a long list of graduates placed in good kindergartens. The curriculum vitae might list prenursery classes and participation in the prestigious Madison Play Group at
Madison Presbyterian Church.
Of the 65 places available for 2- and 3-year-olds every year, siblings of Y students and relatives of board members account for most. Ms. Schulman estimates that the chances for the unaffiliated parent are 10 to 1 at her school. Some think the odds longer.
Members of the Lauder, Tisch and Crown families are Y alumni. Other Y parents have included Kevin Kline and Phoebe Cates, Michel J. Fox and Tracy Pollan, Maury Povich and Connie Chung, Woody Allen and Soon-Yi, and Wendy Wasserstein, Lisa Birnbach and Matthew Bronfman. Katie Couric sent her children to the Y and Brick Church.
While there are no guarantees, applications with a history of donations attached receive more attention, several parents note. The annual benefit alone raises $200,000; one year, tickets to the Oscars were auctioned off. At last year's, at Pier 60, a group of Y parents named the Y Nots -- an investment banker, psychiatrist, lawyer and neurosurgeon -- sang.

''The neurosurgeon was the most nervous,'' Ms. Schulman said, chuckling.
The Brick Church School
Enrollment: 130
Cost: $10,200 (age 3 to 5, five half days) to $13,200 (age 4 and 5, four full days, one half day)
Brick students adhere to a posted daily schedule of activities that seldom varies. But that orderliness, balanced with a sensitivity to a child's development, helps create a warm and secure environment, according to Dr. Spinelli, the director of 27 years.
''In every area,'' she said, ''the teachers assess where the children are cognitively and try to raise them to the next level by using a combination of teaching skills, games and concrete objects, and then integrating them into project work.''
The program stresses age-appropriate activities in math (through block building), social studies (community awareness projects) and language arts and literacy (phonics and reading aloud).
Though the school is in the Silk Stocking District of the Upper East Side, diversity is the new watchword. While there is no quota for minorities (currently 22 percent of students), there is for financial aid. ''To ensure economic diversity,'' Dr. Spinelli said, 10 percent get it. The church has set aside $130,000 and forged a relationship with Early Steps, a nonprofit program that places disadvantaged children in private schools.
One result: fewer opportunities for other applicants to get a signature Brick backpack.
Preferential treatment for admissions is given to siblings and church members (the requirement was just increased to two years' membership, from one) for the 53 places that are available each year for 3-year-olds. Original parents might have been Calvinist, but no longer. Princess Marie-Chantal of Greece, Jane Pauley and Garry Trudeau and ''a branch of the Rockefeller family'' have all sent children to Brick. But mostly, ''it's Wall
Street, Wall Street, Wall Street,'' one parent said.
Accordingly, it took just five months to raise $6 million for a recent renovation. Now
Brick has fiber-optic cable, central air-conditioning and new millwork.
''They are never heavy-handed about fund-raising,'' one parent said. ''You can go every
Sunday, send your kids to Sunday school, get married there and buried there and never give a thing.'' But there's a giving pyramid, a chart that shows how much people donate, but don't expect a board seat or something named for you. There's only one name noticeable: Watson Hall -- for Thomas Watson Sr., I.B.M.'s founder -- a room in the basement where parishioners have coffee after Sunday services.

The Washington Market School
Enrollment: 250 children
Cost: $4,400 (age 1 1/2, two half days) to $15,800 (age 2 1/2 to 5 1/2, five extended days)
The converted loft in TriBeCa that is Washington Market looks like ''Romper Room'' at first glance, with children jumping and running in circles. But there's a healthy hum and serious learning going on.
Washington Market borrows a few elements of Montessori -- mixed-age groupings, binomial and trinomial cubes for number relationships, and spindle boxes for counting -- but the curriculum is ultra-progressive. The school aims to infuse a love of learning, selfconfidence, individuality and creativity in what administrators call a nonracist, nonsexist, nonelitist and nonjudgmental way.
''There's no shame in squiggles of development,'' said Ronnie Moskowitz, who has directed the school since its inception 27 years ago.
Partial walls, open space and flexible hours hark back to those founding days, when ''we all sat on the floor and brainstormed'' about what the school should be, recalled Ms.
Moskowitz, who helped found the school with neighborhood families. ''We wanted no doors, so we could cross-pollinate ideas.''
In fact, children's interests often influence the program. One class wanted to learn to play chess, so a chess teacher was hired. A medieval feast tied into the chess program, and each child made a castle. A group of older children ''wanted to get off their cots'' during rest time. Ms. Moskowitz asked them what they wanted to do. ''They said they wanted to learn about dinosaurs,'' she said. ''And since I love to teach, we went back to before the dinosaurs. I taught them everything about evolution, the Big Bang theory, then we went through all the phyla. This was not for creationists.''
Ms. Moskowitz fondly remembers the parents of her first class. ''It wasn't the old-boy network. It was the old-hippie network.'' But no longer, as TriBeCa has welcomed
Miramax executives, investment bankers, the new gallery crowd and celebrities. Julian
Schnabel, Nicole Miller and Spike Lee sent children here.
''It's a new generation of parents,'' she said. ''It's the $2 million lofts. We were used to having aging hippies here and artists and pioneers. They were willing to live without much, no shoe stores or supermarkets. Now, parents walking in are asking about reading and worrying about testing. They're parents who're afraid of being judged.''
In the application process, Washington Market interviews only parents because the school ''appreciates all children,'' Ms. Moskowitz said. Although admissions may seem less intense, don't be fooled. The ratio of applicants to openings is about 6 to 1 -- a

rebound to the days before Sept. 11. Ms. Moskowitz is planning a lottery for the popular morning sessions (naps interfere with afternoons, which is why those sessions are less expensive at most schools).
This year, Washington Market enrolled nine children whose tuition was partly financed by the city's Agency for Child Development, which paid $6,100 for each child. The school's scholarship fund made up the $32,000 difference. Lorraine Bracco, whose children attended the school, recently donated a ''Sopranos'' coffee table book autographed by the entire cast of the television series to raise money for the fund.
West Side Montessori School
Enrollment: 210
Cost: $9,940 (age 3 to 5, five half days) to $17,884 (age 3 to 5, five extended days)
Marlene Barron refers to her school's philosophy as urban American Montessori. While the program uses traditional Montessori principles -individualized projects, mixed-age groupings, practical tasks like sweeping the floor to teach focus and social responsibility -
- non-Montessori materials like blocks, Legos and a dress-up corner suggest flexibility with the concept.
The school's motto, ''Where to begin,'' reflects its goal: to develop each child's abilities in reading, math, science, the arts and, most important, problem-solving strategies. In one strategy, a teacher pretends not to remember something a child has told him -- say, who he likes to sit next to. This fosters an exchange between child and teacher, and the child uses writing with invented spelling and drawings to explain himself.
Children also master basic addition and subtraction, counting and simple squaring. ''Our kids are adding and subtracting in the thousands,'' Dr. Barron said. She takes offense at the title nursery director. ''We are early childhood heads of school,'' she insisted. She's every bit the part, wearing a navy blue suit, tapping on the iMac on her desk.
As you walk through her school, you see children writing and illustrating a book on the solar system; in another room, children do tracings of their body and label the drawing with internal organs and muscular and skeletal systems. Children in one room study real spider webs, in another the artist Paul Klee. Meanwhile, a former chef from nearby
Carmine's Italian restaurant whips up hot lunch -- her specialties: penne with meat sauce, grilled salmon, tacos, chicken with rice -- in the basement kitchen.
Since the school admits 98 children a year, acceptance is not as long a shot as at comparable schools, but it's still 4 to 1.

When Dr. Barron describes West Side Montessori as a ''multi-multi-school,'' which she often does, she means enrollment reflects the social diversity and multiethnicity of the
Upper West Side. Thirty poor children -- subsidized by the school and the Agency for
Child Development -- attend alongside offspring of the stars. Diane Wiest, as well as
Kyra Sedgwick and Kevin Bacon, have sent children here. Cheryl Jaeger, a former principal dancer for the American Ballet Theater, once headed the parents association.
''We're a school that involves parents, caregivers, family -- everyone has to work,'' Dr.
Barron said. And they do. In the ''parents room,'' sipping coffee from a special Filterfresh machine that the school leases for up to $500 a month, parents plan the annual auction.
''The auction is organized up the kazoo,'' Dr. Barron said.
At a recent one, a class project went for $7,500, and $3,400 took a set of single sheets decorated with children's handprints.
Victoria Goldman is co-author of ''The Manhattan Directory to Private Nursery Schools'' and ''The Manhattan Family Guide to Private and Selective Public Schools'' (both SoHo
Press).