Editing to recognize certain teachers:…read more
I have gone back and forth for over a year about writing this review. Parents deserve to know what we experienced before trusting this school with their children.
Our experience started off well. Like every daycare, there were minor issues here and there, and we gave the school grace because no childcare center is perfect. The problem wasn't that mistakes happened. The problem was that the mistakes kept getting more serious, and every concern was met with excuses, denial, or an attempt to make us feel like we were overreacting. Looking back, I wish I had trusted my instincts and left much sooner.
One of our first major concerns happened in the infant room. My daughter came home with bleach stains all over her pants. The teacher admitted they had sprayed bleach on her high chair, forgot to wipe it down, and then placed my infant in it. That should never happen.
Then came something even more alarming.
I picked up my infant one afternoon, and she screamed hysterically from hunger the entire drive home. I checked Brightwheel because I assumed someone had simply forgotten to log her bottles. Instead, I discovered there were no bottle entries because they had not fed her formula all day. Not a missed log..a missed feeding. As a parent, that is terrifying.
Then there were the coyote issues. Coyotes were coming right up to the school fence and parents even photographed a coyote standing right outside the children's fence (see attached). Tressa's response? Cayenne pepper around the perimeter. It took months of parents pushing before only one small section of fencing was raised. To this day, much of the fence remains low.
Another issue involved mold. The children's play couch had mold covering the bottom. Rather than simply acknowledging the problem and informing parents of mold exposure, the initial response was that it "might be black paint." Parents know what mold looks like.
Cleanliness was another ongoing concern. My children routinely came home with dried food on their faces, dirty hands, and crusted noses. This wasn't dirt from outdoor play. They simply weren't being cleaned throughout the day. My children were constantly sick while attending this school.
The final straw was something I still cannot believe happened.
My daughter came home wearing the exact same diaper I put on her that morning. It was soaked, sagging, cold, and hanging to her knees. I immediately contacted Tressa. Rather than investigating what happened, her first response was that another child also wore Coterie diapers and the teachers must have accidentally used someone else's diaper.
That explanation fell apart almost immediately.
Coterie prints a unique quality-control code on every diaper in a package. The diaper my daughter came home wearing had the exact same code as the open package sitting in my house. It was the diaper I put on her that morning. Only after I sent photographs proving it did the apologies begin.
That was the day I reported the school to Community Care Licensing.
Despite all of this, I want to recognize the people who made our experience better. Ms. Chandler, Ms. Jonnay, Ms. Jenn, and Ms. Debbie are wonderful educators who genuinely love children, and my daughters adored them. I also want to acknowledge that my daughters loved Ms. Tressa as well.
My criticism is not about whether Tressa cares about children. I believe she does.
My criticism is about leadership.
Running a preschool requires more than caring about kids. It requires accountability, transparency, and the ability to admit when something went wrong and fix it. Instead, I consistently felt dismissed. Concerns were minimized. Excuses came before accountability. I was repeatedly made to feel like I was simply a difficult parent for raising legitimate health and safety concerns.
An experienced director once worked at the school and made noticeable improvements because she accepted responsibility and addressed problems head-on. I truly believe the school would benefit tremendously from hiring an experienced director and allowing that person to manage the day-to-day operations.
Tressa, if you're reading this, this review isn't being written because mistakes happened. Every school makes mistakes. This review exists because of how those mistakes were handled. Your response to concerns was almost always to deny, minimize, or explain them away instead of simply acknowledging them and making meaningful changes.
My daughters are thriving at their new school. Every teacher they've had at ANY school has described them as kind, respectful, and a joy to have in class. They weren't the problem. I wasn't the problem. Parents raising concerns about children's health and safety are not the problem.
I sincerely hope this school improves because the children deserve it. But until accountability becomes a priority, I cannot recommend that families entrust their children to this daycare.
