A small family-run school on Bedford Avenue, second generation, and the most traditionally Montessori of the recent Brooklyn additions — with a review picture worth reading carefully.
Harriet Safran, the Director, is the only person named anywhere on the school's website. No guide or assistant is listed, and no credential is attached to anyone — while the site simultaneously invites you to “meet our experienced, certified teachers.” Ask on a tour who will actually be in your child's room and what training they hold.
Half-day morning and afternoon sessions, a full day, and wraparound care from 8:00 to 4:30. A new Young Twos half-day class has been added. Six weeks of summer programme run June into July. The site describes canonical Montessori curriculum areas and calls what it offers “authentic Montessori education” — of the schools we added in this round, it is the one whose published description hews closest to the traditional model.
One inconsistency to raise on a tour: the website advertises enrolment from age 2, but the downloadable application form still says 2 years 9 months.
Not published. The only figure anywhere on the site is a $50 application fee. No parent has stated a tuition figure in any public review either, so we have nothing to report — ask for the schedule in writing.
The one parent-sourced financial detail we did find is a caution rather than a price: a 2023 reviewer said they withdrew their child and lost a substantial prepayment. Ask specifically what happens to prepaid tuition if a placement doesn't work out.
Harriet Safran, Director — the only person named on the site. The school describes itself as family-owned and in its second generation, which one long-ago alum's review independently corroborates.
Beyond that the disclosure stops. No teacher is named, no credential is specified, and no certifying body is identified behind the phrase “certified teachers”. Notably, no parent or staff comment anywhere — across every platform and sixteen years of forum posts — mentions teacher credentials, Montessori training or certification at all. It is neither corroborated nor disputed; it simply has never been discussed.
There is one thin turnover signal, and it is old: a 2010 forum post noted that “some teachers have been there for many years”. Nothing since.
The headline number depends entirely on which platform you look at, and the flattering ones are the least reliable. Niche shows 5.0 from five reviews but is school-claimed. GreatSchools shows 5.0 from 18, but the review text is unreadable and the school appears twice on that platform under duplicate records. PrivateSchoolReview shows 5.00 from three, of which two are word-for-word identical. Google displays no reviews at all and has posting switched off.
The one honest, auditable aggregate is Yelp: 4.1 from 13 reviews — ten five-star and three one-star, with nothing in between. That is the figure we would weigh. Note too that reviews cross-post between platforms, so the counts are not independent of one another.
The positive reviews describe teachers as “incredibly loving, patient, and attentive, taking the time to truly understand each child as an individual” (2026), and a family-run school with “a strong sense of community” whose children “graduate as independent learners and leaders” (2025).
The critical reviews concentrate on one specific thing, and two of them corroborate each other four years apart — the school's approach to separation at drop-off. A 2019 reviewer wrote that at drop-off a staff member “would just snatch him up and close the door in our faces”, and withdrew a two-year-old after a week. A 2023 reviewer put it more evenly: “this school's approach is quick separation between child and parent. While I can understand the value of this approach, it doesn't work well for every child.” Quick separation is a legitimate pedagogical choice that some families actively want. It is worth asking about directly if you know your child would struggle with it.
Sample caution: every platform except Yelp is under our threshold for weighing, and two carry duplicate records. Treat the 5.0s with scepticism and the 4.1 as the real picture.
A neighbourhood regular in the Park Slope Parents listings, but all of it is historical. The most recent substantive mention is May 2024, describing the school as intimate and welcoming. In February 2022 two parents volunteered it unprompted in a thread about a different Montessori school — the kind of organic recommendation that is hard to manufacture.
Park Slope Parents · Feb 2022, May 2024The mild criticisms are administrative and old. A 2018 post asked the school to modernise, noting correspondence was still heavily paper-based. A 2010 post — historical, and the oldest thing we found — praised long teacher tenure but criticised limited outdoor time and an art programme the parent felt “is not exceptionally creative”.
Park Slope Parents · 2018 and ~2010 · historicalNothing on Reddit, and nothing in the local press. Verified across sitewide Reddit searches on both name forms plus the Brooklyn subreddits, and across Brooklyn Paper, Bklyner, Brooklyn Eagle and Ditmas Park Corner. For a small neighbourhood school that is normal, not a warning sign.
Swept 11 August 2026Third-party listings for this school are unusually messy. Five different enrolment figures circulate (90, 78, 69, 60 and 46); one directory shows a Blue Ribbon School badge reading “Selected in n/a”; another carries an Indianapolis area code on a Brooklyn record; and the school appears twice on two separate platforms under duplicate entries. Verify anything you read elsewhere against the school directly.
Checked 11 August 2026Apply through the school directly; a $50 application fee is the only published cost. Worth asking on a tour: who teaches your child's class and what training they hold; what the separation policy at drop-off actually looks like in practice; the refund terms on prepaid tuition; and whether the age-2 or age-2-years-9-months entry point applies to your child.
Violations heard and decided at the city’s administrative tribunal. We publish these in full, including when there are none.
No cases on record. No summons to this school appears in the city’s hearing records.
For comparison: across all 18,161 DOHMH child-care cases heard at OATH, 63.1% were sustained, 21.3% ended in default and 13.1% were dismissed. Most citations concern records, repairs and paperwork — staff immunisation files, premises upkeep, sink water temperature, background-check timing — rather than incidents involving a child.
Source: NYC Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings, case status data, checked 11 August 2026. These are adjudicated outcomes, not inspection allegations. The record gives the rule cited and the result, but never the inspector’s narrative — the charge text always reads “see attached NOV”. Outcomes can change on appeal. Something wrong? Tell us.
Source: NYC Health Department Child Care Connect (live register), checked 22 August 2026; refreshed weekly. Inspection lines are the Department’s own summary results. Pre-adjudicated citation details are not republished here; adjudicated outcomes appear above. Lead results shown with the Department’s protocol status.
Current or former family? Recent first-hand experience is scarce for this school — the most useful reviews are years old.