Private preschool tries Cary

CARY -- A new private preschool will offer yoga in the morning, organic Whole Foods-catered meals for lunch, and learning with child-size Smart Boards in the classroom.

The Grove School's "healthy body, healthy mind, healthy planet" approach touts the importance of teaching recycling and nutrition alongside math and music.

It's a tack that Knowledge Learning Corp., which owns the KinderCare brand, hopes will launch a new line of preschools across the country.

The Portland, Ore., company last month opened The Grove School in this affluent town, on Laura Duncan Drive, and in Plano, Texas, a wealthy suburb of Dallas. To expand elsewhere, it will have to do so against the odds.

The school commands monthly tuition upward of $1,200 at a time when cash-strapped families are spending less on private school education.

Few children have registered thus far at Grove School. But school officials aren't worried.

"Children are our greatest asset, and parents know that," said Scott Anderson, a longtime educator who heads The Grove School of Cary. "By focusing on the early years, you are investing in the rest of their lives."

The benefits of high-quality early childhood education programs have been widely documented. But education experts say Grove School's lineup of licensed teachers, enhanced technology and sound, holistic curriculum would be most beneficial to youngsters who are least able to afford the tuition, which can be more than twice the average cost of child care in the state.

The school offers half-day and full-day programs, ranging from $605 to $1,215 a month, not including meals. It also offers before- and after- school two-hour blocks, which average about $174.

The costs are near those of other private preschools that have survived the recession. Primrose Schools, a similar national chain, has lured parents with its "balanced learning curriculum."

Leslie Moore-Grivalski, owner of Primrose's schools in Cary and Morrisville, says that few parents have balked at thetuitions of almost $1,100 per month.The Grove School's costs are priced to match services provided and offer competitive salaries to certified early childhood educators, said Ty Durekas, president of The Grove School.

"It is a big proposition for many families; it's a big expense," he said. "We think the right thing to do is to set the school up to be an educational learning experience and a quality preschool, and, of course, there's a corresponding cost to that."

On an extensive Web site, Grove School curriculum experts share research on the benefits of programs such as theirs. They cite Geoffrey Canada's Harlem Children's Zone project, which has seen pre-kindergartners in the program outperform the rest of their peers in the state. But that group of children was considered at-risk, not living in comparatively well-offCary, which has a median family income of more than $110,000.

The return

"For this kind of program to really make a difference in somebody's life, it needs to be available to kids who really need it and who would not have a good early childhood environment without it," said Frances Campbell, senior scientist at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute at UNC-Chapel Hill.

Campbell is a lead investigator for the Abecedarian Project, a 30-year study that follows the progress of low-income children who received full-time, high-quality child care from infancy to age 5 in the late 1970s.

The costs for that child care were high, Campbell concedes, reaching about $10,000 per child per year. But it paid off when the children turned 21: Researchers discovered that for every dollar spent early on these children, taxpayers saved about $2.60.

"The benefits do seem like they endure and that they matter," Campbell said. "If you're talking about a rich child who has a lot of parental input anyway - parents who buy all the books and have more time to pay close attention - the argument doesn't hold as strongly. Kids who start out as advantaged are going to end up advantaged as adults."

In a recession, with other area private preschools reporting fluctuating enrollments, it's hard to say if an outdoor vegetable garden or a small teacher-to-student ratio will draw families to the newly opened school.

But nobody faults Grove School's niche curriculum, or even its tuition - pricey but not out-of-the-ordinary.

"I'm for all little kids for having a safe and enriched and inspiring early environment," Campbell said. "And I'm not discriminating for those who are already ahead of the game."