Just an aside but I kind of question why you would start kids who have limited experience on snow out at Alpental- very limited beginner area and a relatively sharp learning curve to jump up to the next chair from chair 4 to 3. Lessons at West or Central provide much more beginner and intermediate terrain (and terrain park at Central) where they'll feel like they are making some progress. Not so fun to ski at as an advanced skier though
As a former instructor at Summit (West, Central, and Alpental) ... I respectfully disagree. The lift they will spend the most time on at Central is Holiday, which is plagued by somewhat steep pitches at the top and bottom, and at West they'll be on Little Thunder, which has a tricky double fall line. Both are horribly overcrowded, especially when the private schools are not able to use the Reggies and Easy Street lifts. The latter are probably the best beginner lifts at the pass, but only open on busy weekends, and sometimes not even then. Even when they are, they are so far from the Central base area SLC instructors at Central rarely use them. For that reason alone, if you do use SLC, I'd take them to Alpental, otherwise use a private school based close to those lifts. At Alpental, chair 4 (St Bernard) is actually a pretty good beginner chair, with an easy on and easy off. And in a normal winter, when a good cat track is cut across from Chair 1 to lower Nash, they have a long varied intermediate run to graduate to.
Terrain aside, the base area set up at Alpy is better too. If you get there early enough, you can park and set up shop within feet of all the beginner lifts and (most importantly) the Shot 10 bathrooms. At Central they'll have to cross a busy road and walk up a steep hill to the base area. At West, you may get parking close to Little Thunder, but more likely you'll be wading through the hordes stumbling along from more distant lots.
