choosing a preschool long-distance

[crl]

I would appreciate any suggestions for conducting a long-distance precshool search. As I posted before, we're moving to SF, from DC, next August because DH has a great job there. We're really excited and trying to get started on the planning. DS will turn 3 next June and I'm hopeful he will be ready for preschool in the Fall, so I need to get moving on trying to find one for him.

Unfortunately, we won't be able to visist schools until we go to look for housing next summer--I think that's too late to apply to most SF preschools. I'm thinking that we'll do a co-op preschool both because of cost and because it might help me make a few friends.

It seems to me like the best way to approach this is to use the list of co-op preschools that a very helpful fellow BBBer already posted for me, choose the ones that work geographically and seem to fit DS based on their websites. Then, I would call and explain the long-distance search and ask for 15 minutes or so of the director's time (either then or make an appointment for later). I would use that time to ask a set of questions that would be the same for each school.

Hopefully, I would end up with 3 or 4 schools that seem good, apply to them all, and visit when we are in the city for the housing search. Then we could choose one school. . . .

Does this seem like the right approach? And what questions should I ask?

Thanks so much!