How much does it cost to send your child to San Francisco’s priciest preschools?

First, a baseline: The Chronicle put together an analysis of data from more than 300 preschools around the city, including tuition cost. For a family that needs coverage for an 8-hour workday, the typical monthly bill comes in around $2,500. For parents looking for part-time options, there are preschools starting at just a few hundred dollars a month.

For families at or below 200% of the area median income, the city offers financial assistance through Early Learning for All, or ELFA. For families of four earning less than $178,300 per year, preschool is free in participating programs, with tiered assistance offered for incomes up to $324,200.

But at the high end, preschool can get pricey. To calculate what’s truly the most expensive preschool in the city, we took the monthly sticker price and broke that down into per-hour costs for both full-time (eight hours or more) and part-time (less than eight hours) programs.

By this calculation, the most expensive preschool in San Francisco is La Scuola International School in the Dogpatch neighborhood. We calculated that its part-time program, running 4 hours and 45 minutes per day, costs about $3,780 per month, which works out to a little under $37 an hour. The school’s 9-hour full-day program costs $4,730 a month, or about $24 an hour.

Based simply on the monthly sticker price, the most expensive full-time preschool in San Francisco is Children’s Day School in the Mission District. It charges $4,890 per month – but it’s available 10 hours a day, which makes the hourly cost about $22.50. Both La Scuola International and Children’s Day are K-8 schools that offer preschool programs.

Some of the more expensive preschools may offer things like a cutting-edge curriculum or language immersion – or both. Spanish instruction is built into the curriculum at Children’s Day School, which also incorporates hands-on lessons in its outdoor farm and garden space. Classes at La Scuola International School are conducted 90% in Italian, and the school describes the approach as Reggio Emilia-inspired with an International Baccalaureate curriculum.

Here are the most expensive full-time and part-time preschool programs in San Francisco, by hourly cost:

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This article originally published at What it costs to go to San Francisco’s most expensive preschools.