A mad-as-heck Manhattan mom says her daughter’s Ivy League dreams have been all but dashed — and she’s only 4 years old.
Nicole Imprescia is suing the $19,000-a-year York Avenue Preschool, saying her daughter, Lucia, was forced to spend too much time with lesser-minded 2- and 3-year-
olds when she should have been focusing on test preparation to get into an elite elementary school.
The suit, filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, notes that “getting a child into the Ivy League starts in nursery school” and says the Upper East Side school promised Imprescia it would “prepare her daughter for the ERB, an exam required for admission into nearly all the elite private elementary schools.”
But “it became obvious [those] promises were a complete fraud,” the suit says. “Indeed, the school proved not to be a school at all but just one big playroom.”
The miffed mom yanked her daughter after just three weeks — but the school is refusing to refund the $19,000 she had to pay up front, said her lawyer, Mathew Paulose.
“What are they keeping the $19,000 for when the child was in school for under a month?” Paulose said. “It’s ridiculous.”
The school’s lawyer, Bill Wachtel, said that his client was “surprised and disappointed” that Imprescia gave up her highly sought-after slot but that there is a no-refund policy.
The suit claims: “Studies have shown entry into a good nursery school guarantees more income than entry into an average school.”
Imprescia’s suit said the school boasted of having an age-appropriate curriculum and a “high success rate in getting its students into high-caliber Manhattan elementary schools, both public and private.”
Imprescia said she soon realized she’d gotten schooled.
“Plaintiff’s daughter, as well as the sons and daughters of the other parents, were dumped amongst each other, notwithstanding their age differences,” the suit says.
Also, at age 4, the school was “still teaching plaintiff’s daughter about shapes and colors,” the suit says. “In other words, there was no ‘curriculum designed for a specific age group’ also as promised,” the suit says.