By Khalida Sarwari
The Saratoga Parent Nursery School is back in business. After a two-year closure, the school is set to reopen next month with some changes.
The first day of school is scheduled for Sept. 9 and enrollment is still open, said Lynda Anderson, a former director who’s currently a member of the SPNS board. They’ll be sharing the facility, which is located behind Saratoga High School at 20490 Williams Ave., with Alphabet Soup, a for-profit preschool SPNS has been renting to for the last two years.
It was a move that gave Alphabet Soup a home while generating much-needed revenue for SPNS, said Anderson. Decreasing enrollment and lack of funding shuttered the school in 2013, a first in the school’s 68-year history.
Prior to its closure, the school had been operating with less funding every year–even dipping into its reserves–after the Los Gatos-Saratoga Joint Union High School District cut its parent education funding about six years ago, according to Anderson. Realizing the value of a school like SPNS in the Saratoga community, a group of alumni came together to “save” the school. Their work entailed doing an assessment of where the school had failed and what needs weren’t being met.
Board president Wendy Gorelick was part of that group. She said she put both of her kids through SPNS and is still reaping the benefits from the parent-participation model employed by the school. Involving herself in the effort to reopen the school was “a labor of love” for her, she said.
“I have to say that even though I don’t have a child at SPNS anymore, I’m one of the presidents of the board getting it reopened and I’m doing that because of how special it was for our family,” Gorelick said. “I think it was sad for a lot of alumni families, and I felt I wanted to be part of the reopening.”
Gorelick relayed the pride she felt when her son, Bobby, now a sixth-grader at Christa McAuliffe School in Cupertino, stepped into his classroom on his first day of kindergarten and never looked back.
“He was a really shy little boy, and I think for him it helped him socially because at Saratoga Parent Nursery School play was such an important component and the teachers really fostered him playing with other children, so I think it made him much more confident,” she said. “I felt like it was a really good all-around experience and good platform for him to start kindergarten.”
SPNS is one of a handful of parent co-ops in the area. The school was established in 1947 as a babysitting co-op but evolved into a parent participation nursery school over time. Designed for children 2 and up until kindergarten age, the program promotes interaction and play with materials and other children under the supervision of a teacher. The new model being envisioned for the school is one that encourages parents to observe their children in weekly 90-minute class sessions and then discuss their findings with a teacher, said Anderson.
“The benefit is they spend some special time with their child,” she said. “They are in a group of people where they feel supported because the people all have the same issues. I’ve had many parents tell me they learned more than their child did.”
Classes are held Monday and Wednesday afternoons and Saturday mornings. For more information about SPNS, visitsaratogaparentnurseryschool.org.
