Red Staff transparency
This is the guide's least transparent school: no staff page, no bios and no credentials are published, and even the director's name surfaces only through third-party directories. You can't tell who would teach your child from the school's own site. Why this matters →
Snapshot
See the school
Forest Hills
Forest Hills is a leafy, family-friendly slice of central Queens known for its Tudor architecture and the planned enclave of Forest Hills Gardens, the Austin Street shopping strip, and fast E/F/LIRR access to Manhattan.
Overview
Forest Hills Montessori is a small, long-established neighborhood school (founded in the early 1970s) serving ages 2–12 on the Austin Street corridor, with French, music, yoga and STEAM enrichment and before/after care.
Programs & ages
Preschool (2–5) plus an elementary program (through age 12), with wraparound care from early morning to 6pm.
Tuition
The school does not publish tuition — you'll need to contact them directly. Compare where it would sit against schools that do publish on our tuition page.
Leadership & transparency
This is the honest hard part: the school publishes no staff or leadership page, no teacher bios and no credentials. The director's name (Sunila Tejpaul) appears only in third-party directories, and even its spelling is unconfirmed. For a directory built on transparency, we flag this plainly — a family can't learn who teaches here, or their qualifications, from the school's own web presence.
Accreditation & authenticity
We found no AMS or AMI affiliation for the school, so it's best treated as Montessori-inspired with authenticity unverified. If authentic Montessori matters to you, use our tour checklist to vet it in person.
What parents say
Reviews are older and mixed — GreatSchools shows 3.6/5 across ~13 reviews, most from 2005–2014. Recurring praise for academic prep alongside recurring concerns about crowding and stress:
"He and three classmates were able to test for Hunter… these children each received academic scholarships to a local private school." — Parent review, GreatSchools, 2012
"The class seemed overloaded with kids and the teachers appeared frazzled… they stress rote work rather than independent thinking." — Parent review, GreatSchools, 2011
Heard around town
Signals from public parent forums and listservs and our own parent & alumni interviews. Forum chatter is opinion — take it with a grain of salt; interview quotes are first-hand and shared with permission.
Admissions
Admissions are rolling; contact the school to inquire and tour. See our admissions timeline for the broader NYC picture.