One of the warmest-reviewed preschools in the directory — 96 Google reviews, 95 of them five stars. And almost none of them describe a Montessori classroom.
The school's website names no director, no teacher, no credential. The only name on it is a first name inside a parent testimonial. Ninety-six reviewers, by contrast, know exactly who runs the place — see Leadership below. The rating measures disclosure, and on disclosure this school publishes almost nothing.
Four age groups from the twos through a Pre-K “Leadership Year”, on a schedule that runs as short as 8:30–12:30 or as long as 8:30–6:00, two, three or five days a week. The school follows the DOE calendar and offers vacation care. It describes a real Montessori work cycle alongside Reggio-inspired project work — hence the “fusion” framing, which it uses itself and which we have adopted rather than calling the school simply Montessori.
The site also mentions expanding to include infant and toddler care for ages 0 to 2 in a new centre, with no date and no address given. Worth asking whether that has happened.
Not published on the school's own site. Two third-party childcare platforms carry business-supplied figures, and they disagree in an odd direction: one lists roughly $2,866 a month full-time and $1,234 part-time as of mid-2026, while an older listing from late 2025 shows about $3,009 a month. The newer number is the lower one, so treat this as a rough range rather than a price and confirm directly.
Striking absence: not one of the 96 Google reviews mentions a dollar figure. For a Manhattan preschool that is unusual, and it means we have no parent-side check on the numbers above.
This is the sharpest gap between what a school publishes and what is publicly known about it that we have encountered.
The school's own website names nobody. No director, no teachers, no credentials, no bios.
Its parents name the owner constantly. Roughly two in five Google reviews mention Craig by first name, and one names him in full: Craig Schatten, identified as owner, founder and director across the business's own Yelp owner account and several professional directories. He replies to about a third of the school's reviews. He appears nowhere on the school's site.
A further wrinkle: New York State corporate records list a different individual as CEO of Rose Hill Montessori Corp. That person is mentioned in none of the 96 reviews. We are not drawing an inference from this — corporate officers and day-to-day directors are often different people — but it is worth knowing that the public record and the parent record name two different people, and the school itself names neither.
No review anywhere mentions staff turnover, teacher training, or Montessori credentials.
The sentiment is genuinely, unusually strong. 96 Google reviews averaging 4.99 — 95 five-star and a single four-star, with no one-, two- or three-star review at all. Yelp adds 13 more, all five-star. The flow is current: 22 of the Google reviews landed in the past year and the newest is days old. This is not a thin or stale sample, and we have no reason to doubt it — the reviews are long, specific, and mostly from accounts with a history.
Recent examples: “Lovely Kindergarten, great atmosphere and attitude, my granddaughter loves arriving every morning” and “This is a gem of a school within Manhattan. Craig, the owner, is always available and responsive.”
The single four-star review is worth quoting because it is the most descriptive thing anyone has written: “The school has a bohemian feel, with an open, fluid layout. Lots of play with natural materials, live-music dance parties and crafty learning activities.” The same reviewer calls it “full-day care”.
⭐ And here is the finding that matters for a Montessori directory. Across 109 reviews on two platforms, only two contain any Montessori vocabulary at all, and exactly one mentions Reggio. Meanwhile fourteen reviewers spontaneously call it a daycare or nursery school, sixteen call it a preschool, and thirty-two praise the playground. Google's own auto-generated topic tags contain no Montessori term.
Nobody disputes the Montessori label. Nobody confirms it either. The families who love this school describe warmth, responsiveness, outdoor space and a relaxed atmosphere — not prepared environments, work cycles or Montessori materials. That is a real signal about what the school is like day to day, and it is why we carry it as a fusion rather than as Montessori. If an authentic Montessori programme is what you are shopping for, this is the school to ask the most specific questions about.
No independent parent chatter exists. Nothing on Reddit under the school's name, domain or address — checked sitewide and across r/nyc, r/AskNYC, r/nycparents, r/Manhattan, r/Montessori, r/Preschool and r/daycare. Nothing in any parent forum, and nothing in the local press. For a school with 96 warm reviews that is a genuinely odd combination, and we record it rather than explain it away.
Swept 11 August 2026An inversion worth knowing about. Where this school's name does surface in NYC parent groups, the poster appears to be the school marketing itself rather than a parent recommending it — near-identical solicitations attributed to the director show up in two different Manhattan parent groups, around October 2025 and April 2026. Seen only in search-result snippets; we did not visit the groups themselves.
Search snippets · Oct 2025, Apr 2026A quiet negative-space datapoint, historical. In a 2024 thread, a parent moving to Kips Bay asked for preschool recommendations. Locals suggested two schools further away. Rose Hill — the nearest Montessori-named option — was not mentioned by anyone.
r/nycparents, 2024 · historicalApply directly; enrolment has been open for the autumn term. Given the profile above, the questions worth asking are specific: who leads your child's classroom and what Montessori training they hold; how much of the day is a genuine uninterrupted work cycle; which parts of the programme are Montessori and which are Reggio; and whether the infant/toddler expansion has actually opened.
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.
If your child attends, we would genuinely like to hear how Montessori the day actually is — that is the one thing 109 reviews don't tell us.