Worst parent participation preschool ever! Too bad that I can't give negative 5 stars.
When I first arrived at Bright Beginnings (referred to as BB thereafter), I was already very taken back by the facility - cement grounds for play structure, dark classrooms, greasy tables, un-organic food, limited worn and dirty toys), but I was willing to give it a try since you cannot judge a book from its cover. It sure looks like a poorly funded program and worse still, a program with chaotic management and indifferent parents who churn in and out of the program throughout the year.
When you join a parent participation program, you want a community (which is something I found with Mountain View's Parent Observation MVPO). You want more control over your child(ren)'s emotional and intellectual development. BB is a program without any feeling of community because parents are busy churning out, and you don't really get that much involvement because the art projects are cheaply put together, while the free play time is confined to a very very tired playground that lacks maintenance.
After talking to another parent who churned out of the program, I decided to follow her to MVPO, but I didn't drop out fast enough. At my VERY FIRST parent meeting where the teachers' assistant and other parents were supposed to look after my daughter during her first separation experience in life, she fell from the slide and broke her arm. The fact that she broke her arm didn't upset me, because accidents happen, but what really got my stomach turning was that NOBODY at the facility, no parents nor aides nor teacher, told me of the incident. The playground in theory was supposed to be supervised throughout the free play time. But no one told me a word, and I came back to a screaming two-year old who couldn't articulate her pain and I thought she was just extremely upset that I went away. She kept crying for the whole day and eventually cried herself to sleep. I didn't discover anything was wrong until her broken arm was completely swollen late at night, and I had to rush her to ER at 10PM. That was almost 12 hours after her incident!! Not only that, I found out later that on the very same day, another child broke out of the locked playground to look for his mother and he could have gone lost had he not be smart enough to find the mom in the conference room. Then a week later, another parent I know also dropped out because her daughter got lice from her classmatest. My daughter's accident was not an isolated incident, this is a place where disasters are bound to happen. When I was doing BB and MVPO concurrently, for a brief time, my daughter always resisted going to BB, and I should have listened to her instinct.
Before arriving at MVPO, I didn't know that classroom could be so brightly lit by natural light, toys so new and varied, art projects so interesting, the yard so lovely, and teacher so caring. Upon knowing my daughter's incident, Teacher Diane at MVPO was very understanding and let me off the hook for parent meetings for several months to get my daughter comfortable to her peers and the environment. When we eventually did my parent meeting away from her, I came back to a child so bursting with laughter and self-confidence.
If you are looking at BB, think twice. Better still, go tour the Mountain View Parent Observation 18-month, 2's and 3's program (yes, there may be a waiting list), Los Altos Parent Nursery's young 3 program, and Cupertino's Toddler and Me program for 2s and 3s. You will know the difference right away, because I enroll in several parent participation programs at the same time and I know which one is the worst, by far. For those who raved about the school, all I can say is, they have never tried other parent participation programs and have no idea what they are missing. In this year alone, I do altogether 4 (not counting BB), yes you read it right, FOUR parent participation programs and I know what I am talking about. read more