Pre School for My 3 Year Old and Thoughts on Ferndale Schools and Community

Hi, we have a 3 year old and a 4 month old and we live in Ferndale. We absolutely love the community--its walkable, diverse, friendly and central to everything. We still have our own questions on the schools but one thing we do love is that our street has a lot of kids the same ages as ours. We just love that our daughter can yell across the street to her friend and we set up play dates often. For pre-school, I can recommend the Drayton co-op preschool which is in Ferndale. If you have time, it is a wonderful program in which you have to work a certain amount in the school, but it allows for a very affordable program. My daughter loved the parent/tot 2 year old class. We are changing next year because with the baby and a part time job, i just don't have the time to work in the class room like i would need to.

In general, I have heard wonderful things about the Kennedy school (requires the lottery) and overall, i know many high school kids that are GREAT kids. The band, theatre program is excellent and most of the school facilities are nice. Of course, many a people move out to the burbs for the schools... if we move, it will be down south for warmer weather. Anyways, to make a long story short, we think Ferndale is great!

Be sure to consider Oak Park with Ferndale schools...cheaper homes but same school district. We recently moved to Southfield with Birmingham schools - but I miss my Oak Park home very much. The neighboors were absolutely awesome. A real sense of community, everyone knew each other and helped each other out.

We just moved from Ferndale. We loved the community but we had no kids in the neighborhood to play with. The preschool we went to was in Royal Oak - First Congregational Church Preschool - it's a co-op, secular, and we loved the people and the teacher. Great experience and its cost was very low. You just have to work in the classroom about once every month and a half. It's just down Woodward by the Shrine. I would highly recommend it.

We didn't get into Kennedy - the magnet school. You must get in by lottery and once you are in, you're in. (we did it too late) We didn't have good feelings about the other elementary school (Rossevelt - I may be getting them mixed up) so we sent our daughter to a private school (Japhet in Madison Heights, which we loved ) for her first year. But we knew we couldn't do that her entire school life (expensive) so we moved to Brighton, which has great schools. I really LOVED Ferndale and miss being able to walk everywhere, but it's soooo great having kids to play with. I would so suggest that you check out the neighborhood for other kids before you move in because having playmates makes such a huge difference in your lives and the kids. They do have the Kulick Community Center, which is a great place to meet others with kids and they have so much going on all the time. There are so many new families there, but it seemed that a lot of them moved once their kids became school age. But I really liked everyone I met there (We lived there for 10 years) and love the whole community feel of it (very strong). The library is going to go through a huge renovation - we spent a lot of time there. Ferndale is so central to everything - the zoo, detroit, festivals... but there just weren't enough kids for us and we didn't get into the school we wanted so we chose to move on.

My grandkids are in the wonderful OPEN SCHOOL PROGRAM in Kennedy School is Ferndale. They have this program through middle school. It's a parent-led program. There is no preschool but this program is kind of a school within a school and well worth looking into.

I have a friend who lived in Ferndale until she had to move for her husband's job and they loved it there. My son is in preschool with another couple who live there and also love it. They are trying to sell their house as they want to move to a larger one. My friend is an elementary teacher for the Ferndale district. If you are interested in their house, I can have her call you if you send me your number. My e-mail is ____@____.com

My son is in preschool in Ferndale at Ferndale Montessori. I cannot say enough good things about the program. However, it is not cheap.

I really like Ferndale, lots of cute independently owned shops and restaurants. You can take nice walks through the neighborhoods. It seems like there are activities going on during the summer. The location is fantastic. There is a lot of effort right now to make the downtown area even nicer.