San Francisco, CA
Circle of Friends

Director's Comments

Question to director: Do you have any additional thoughts on what parents should consider when looking at your school? Is there any advice that you would like to provide to prospective parents?


Once accepted into the school, parents are making a commitment to pay for the entire year their child has been enrolled into. Parents will need to pay the balance of the year even if they leave the program, move away.... Our success comes from satisfied, returning parents who have been with us for many years.

Parents' Comments

Parent #1
I love that the school is small and intimate: it is the perfect school for children that are "thinkers"

Parent #2
I believe the main teacher, Michele has zero tolerance for kids who require a bit more effort to teach and do not fit into her 'ideal child' mold. Since this is a private school and not under the scrutiny of certain California state laws, it appears that the school has become quite lax and lazy in maintaining standards.

Parent #3
This school has a 'one-size-fits-all' curriculm. with individual needs and differences discouraged. Teacher communication is very poor

Parent #4
The school is small, so the two teachers focus very much time and attention on each child. They excel in music, art, French, and academics. At the same time, they make school fun and the children love attending. No one ever cries when being dropped off. It is a warm environment and provides a superb education.

Parent #5
My child learns French and music. She always comes home singing a new song that she memorized. She sings songs that are from various eras-Jazz, contemporary, etc.

Parent #6
The strengths of the school are many; the main weakness I see is that the owner and operator of the school does not have relationships with other schools to make it more of a 'feeder' school. She does not toot her own horn, but instead focuses on the kids. Her skills with children are wonderful but she has not made inroads with the various private schools in SF in which many parents wish to place their children. I have found that children from this school are often far ahead of their peers when they enter kindergarten.

Parent #7
This is a small school ( 10 per class- 2 teachers). The children have wonderful one-on-one attention. They discourage formation of cliques by splitting the children in informal rotating small groups. All of the children feel so comfortable, supported by teachers and secure with their friendships ( i.e.. you never hear so and so is weird, bad etc.) that they have time to focus on learning what they want to learn. As parents there is a very good support network and if you can't be somewhere on time generally some one is more than willing to pick up your child or help in some way. Also, an added bonus, the head teacher is French so they learn a lot of French songs, words etc.

Montessori? Waldorf? Play-based?

What school type is right for your child? Is one model better than another? What does the research say?

View an example from the Savvy Source guide to learn more.

Trace around your child's foot, with shoe on, on a piece of white construction paper or card stock. Have child cut out the shoe print and add a spooky face. Glue it to a popsicle stick and you have a ghost stick puppet!

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