Monday, December 21, 2015

Roosevelt Island Day Nursery Is A Candidate To Offer NYC Department Of Education Universal Pre Kindergarten Class For 2016-17 School Year - Is Your Family Interested?


The Roosevelt Island Day Nursery reports:
Roosevelt Island Day Nursery (RIDN) is pleased to announce that we are a candidate to offer Universal Prekindergarten (UPK) classes on Roosevelt Island for the 2016-2017 school year. We are optimistic that RIDN will be an approved UPK site for many reasons: we already have the necessary Department of Health license, are staffed with Director/teachers that have the required qualifications, and have a proven history as a UPK site.

There are a number of steps that need to happen before we are definitely approved. We are hoping to know definitively in spring. In the meantime, the Department of Education is seeking information from us. In order to help them determine how many spots RIDN may be allotted, they would like to know how many families in the Roosevelt Island community would be interested in a full-day UPK program. Communicating your interest at this early stage is important to the planning process; we hope to serve as many community families as possible. (As described in the DOE UPK community-based organization's admissions guidelines, RIDN will first allocate UPK spots for children currently enrolled at RIDN). If you have a child born in 2012 (eligible for UPK in 2016-2017), are not currently attending RIDN and are interested in your child attending a full-day UPK in September, please email Rhonda at office@ridn.org. Please include your name, your child's full name and date of birth, address, and your phone contact information.

If you are interested in enrolling your child at RIDN before September 2016, we do still have vacancies and would be happy to give you a tour. We also have some scheduled Open Houses where we will share information about our philosophy and tour both of our sites:
  • Friday, February 5 8-:30 am-9:30 am (morning tour)
  • Thursday, February 25 6:30-8 pm (evening tour)
  • Saturday, February 27 10:30 am-12 pm (weekend tour)
If you would like to attend one of these Open Houses, please RSVP to Rhonda at office@ridn.org.

If RIDN does become an approved UPK provider for the 2016-2017 school year, we look forward to meeting this need by helping more families be able to have a high-quality full-day UPK program located on the Island.
Roosevelt Island's PS/IS 217 currently has 2 full day 18 seat pre-kindergarten classes. One class is entirely of siblings.

Parents have said there is a great need for additional pre-kindergarten seats on Roosevelt Island.


Roosevelt Island's Island Kids and the St Cabrini Catholic Parish are reportedly trying to establish a Pre-Kindergarten program as well.

More information on NYC DOE Pre-Kindergarten program available here and at previous posts.

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