Parents who want to get their tots into private kindergarten better plan ahead — by about nine months.
Frantic mothers have begun planning their pregnancies so that their babies aren’t born during the summer, to avoid getting shut out by elite private kindergartens, parents told The Post.
That’s because the cutoff date for most of Manhattan’s toniest schools is Sept. 1, and admissions directors don’t like to take children turning 5 in June, July or August because they think the child isn’t old enough to keep up, said Upper East Side Epiphany Community Nursery School headmaster Wendy Levey.
Levey calls schools’ official Sept. 1 admissions cutoff “a big fat lie.”
“Depending on how old your child is, you might be stuck,” she explained.
Parents of “summer babies” whose applications are rejected usually wait a year and apply again, when their child is older — which means they’ll pay for an extra year of pre-K at up to $27,000.
But children rejected twice can’t go to a private kindergarten — they have to go to public school, where the age-cutoff date is Dec. 31, and begin in first grade.
For many mothers, the dilemma has redefined family planning.
“I can’t help when I’m most fertile!” said one pregnant Manhattan mother, who is expecting a second child in the summer.
Her comments came last week during a “Big City Moms” event on the Upper East Side, where many others admitted that the kindergarten cutoff factors into when they try to get pregnant.
One fashion executive said her August baby was rejected from seven private kindergartens.
“I wish there was someone telling me, ‘Don’t look at Collegiate because unless your son is so off the charts, there is no chance if he’s an August baby,’ ” she said.
“I would have applied to a pre-K program instead, and now I’m stuck at the 11th hour scrambling to find a pre-K program.”
“It’s a lot of money!” she said.