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Wilmington Friends readies preschool
By Adam Taylor,
The News Journal

Tuesday, February 28, 2004

Wilmington Friends School will help fulfill its original mission to serve neighborhood children when it opens a downtown preschool in September, administrators and city officials said Friday. The new school at First & Central Presbyterian Church, across from Rodney Square, will have two classes with 14 students each, said Lisa Darling, Wilmington Friends' head of schools. Enrollment will be open to 2-, 3- and 4-year-olds.

When Quakers founded the school at Fourth and West streets in Wilmington in 1748, its charter vowed to serve the children in the neighborhood - whether they were boys or girls, black or white, rich or poor. But the school, which includes a preschool, moved to Alapocas in 1937. The new preschool "is the latest manifestation of that mission in action," Darling said.

It will cost $9,000 to attend the full-day preschool year-round, or $7,400 for the 10-month school year. About a third of the students would pay full tuition, a third would receive partial scholarships, and a third would receive full subsidies. Darling said the preschool's location and the economic diversity of the students' families should produce racially mixed classrooms. "We believe a deliberately diverse environment is a better one," she said. The new school is expected to increase diversity at the Alapocas school as well. Once the students complete the preschool, they will be admitted automatically into the Alapocas school. The number of kindergartners at Wilmington Friends will not grow when the new preschoolers are ready to transfer there, so placement will become more competitive, Darling said. Quakers and children with older siblings at the K-12 school will be given preference for admission, she said.

Norean Archie, a West Center City mother of a 3-year-old girl and 4-year-old boy, said she would be interested in learning more about the school. "It sounds nice," she said. "I think it's a great idea."

Mayor James M. Baker said the opportunities for Wilmington's children are important. He said children from impoverished backgrounds cannot be expected to compete with middle- and upper-class children later in life, even if doors are opened for them then. "We have to help children be able to survive," he said. "If you don't, well, you have prisons, and people who will be in poverty permanently."

Wilmington City Councilman Theo K. Gregory said he thinks the school will have a positive effect on the lives of its students. "How they begin is certainly going to impact on how they end," he said.

The Rev. Douglas Gerdts of First & Central Presbyterian said housing the school at the church is a perfect fit. Church officials decided in 2002 that it needed to create more programs to connect with downtown workers and residents of the surrounding neighborhoods. MBNA and Wilmington Trust are helping with tuition expenses. Each company has buildings within a block of the church.