Legal News

Only in NYC: Mother v. Pre School

By Ashby Jones

News of the following lawsuit is going to seem absolutely insane to anyone who’s never lived in New York City.

But it might seem only slightly less insane even to those who have lived in Gotham.

The NYT story opens:

A Manhattan woman has sued a $19,000-a-year preschool her daughter attended, arguing that the program failed to adequately prepare her daughter for the test required to enter New York City's hypercompetitive private school system.

The suit, filed by Nicole Imprescia on Friday in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, said the York Avenue Preschool had not fulfilled its stated commitment to prepare her 4-year-old daughter, Lucia, for the intelligence test known as the E.R.B.

"The school proved to be not a school at all, but just one big playroom," the suit claimed.

We’re of two minds here. On the one hand, yes, it is insane to sue a pre-school for anything short of leaving little Johnny overnight in an abandoned field.

On the other, there’s nothing normal about pre-school in New York — especially its expense. If you’re dropping $19k per year, we’d argue that you’d better be getting more than blocks, scissors and paste.

York Avenue's president, Michael Branciforte, declined to comment to the NYT. The school's lawyer, William Wachtel, said that the curriculum "is designed to help students on their E.R.B."

Our favorite part of the story: that the plaintiff in her complaint linked to news stories linking a good pre-school and the Ivy League. "It is no secret that getting a child into the Ivy League starts in nursery school," says one. "Studies have shown entry into a good nursery school guarantees more income than entry into an average school," says another.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on March 15, 2011 (boomark / email).