What Sets Us Apart?

There's nothing worse than having children, relatives, or friends in different schools whose calendars and off days do not align. Accordingly, as a starting place, we found it helpful for families to mirror our academic year calendar off of the San Ramon Valley Unified School District calendar as closely as possible. This provides for approximately 180 school days per year. However, we also recognize that the holidays and staff development days provided to older children do not always match up with work schedules and it is often difficult to find coverage for your preschooler. Accordingly, at YLA, we decided to first follow the school district calendar but also add in an extra 18 days of preschool, for a total of 198 days per year. What's best of all is, while many preschools charge extra for any additional days you need coverage beyond the base academic calendar, at YLA, our tuition rate is based on the 180 school day year with the 18 extra days built in at no extra cost!

• LONGER SCHOOL DAY SO THAT WE CAN MEET YOUR FAMILY’S NEEDS  √

Many preschools condense their school day into a schedule that is convenient for staffing but not always convenient for parents. At YLA, we recognize that each family’s schedule is different and accommodate morning drop-offs and pick-ups that align with your schedule.That’s why we scheduled our school to open at 7:00 a.m. every day and stay open until 6:00 p.m.

While it is convenient that schools provide snacks for children, in our experience, many schools regularly provide nutritionless, carbohydrate-dense, processed foods for snacks. At YLA, we focus on delivering clean ingredients and organic snacks to our children.

Sample snack calendar >>

At many preschools, the quoted price is often not what ultimately comes out of your pocket. From potty training fees to extra fees for early morning dropoff, these extra costs can add up. At YLA, we value being open and straightforward with families and prefer to avoid nickel-and- diming (exactly how we would want it because we have been in your shoes!). We don’t fee you for potty training and we don’t fee you to drop off early.

At YLA, we choose academic programs that are multifunctional. For example, we use “Handwriting without Tears,” which was developed by an occupational therapist and is designed to develop not just a child’s handwriting skills, but also their fine motor and visual skills through fun and interactive activities. Similarly, Zoo-phonics is a multisensory language arts program with a multi-modal approach to learning all aspects of language arts, including vocabulary development and articulation, based on phonics and phonemic awareness.