I wanted so badly for this to be a great school. Before OCA officially opened, I toured the campus and met with the owners and directors and walked away feeling like I had just hit the jackpot. The owners explained that they had opened OCA because they, too, were parents fed up with the daycare system and wanted OCA to be the difference. When I toured the school, I was impressed with the facility - it was very bright and cheery. It looked and felt like something different was going to happen there. When I found out how expensive it was, I was hesitant, but went ahead and took the chance because I had fallen in love with their vision. Before OCA opened, the owners explained that the high tuition costs were because the children's breakfast, lunches and snacks would be catered by an organic catering company, there would be school field trips, forward-thinking enrichment programs, and that the teachers would be high quality with none of them having less than a B.A. in Early Childhood Ed and pursuing their Masters. The bottom line is that this is a school that doesn't know how to be a school yet, but they are charging prices of a top-notch school simply because they know how to pitch that it is one. Makes zero sense. It quickly became the place that I would sit around and complain about with other parents.
After being sold a dream, here's what I ACTUALLY ended up with:
The Director: I could go on and on about the director, but I'll try to keep it short. She was a very condescending and passive aggressive person, often times snapping at simple questions or requests and treated her staff very inappropriately. I witnessed it myself on several occasions. One parent even told me she felt like she was bullied by the director. I complained to the owners about her a few times, but never got anywhere with that. So, good luck with speaking up and submitting complaints about things there.
There was almost ZERO communication from administration to parents there. I found out SO many important things through the grapevine. There was a time when my daughter's teacher was out sick for a week and I was never told. I had to complain several times to get them to email me when her teacher was out, also letting me know who would be replacing her. Until I complained about it, parents were not informed of staff changes (I will get into the awful teacher turnover rate shortly). So, I would find out that my daughter had a new teacher or assistant teacher when one of them would bring her to me at pick up time. No formal email, no nothing. And even after I complained and suggested that the administration alert ALL parents, they still didn't - and only emailed me directly as if I was some especially needy parent. I had to demand that the administration have the new teachers and assistants introduce themselves when they started because I would often times be handed my child by someone I'd never seen or heard of.
Now, the turnover rate - put it this way: my daughter was there for a year and had 4 different teachers and countless assistant teachers. It was ridiculous. It seemed like every time I showed up to pick her up, there was some strange person handing her off to me. This means one thing - THE TEACHERS WERE NOT HAPPY. It got to the point where they were so low on good staff that they had to have one of the better teachers teaching two classes at the same time. I was told she would go back and forth between the two classes all day. I met with the director about this and she tried to convince me that this was a good idea because the teacher was not needed in the other classes during her down time when the students were doing art projects, etc. Now, my response to that was - and I'm paying you HOW MUCH again?? For my child to be sharing a teacher because you can't keep good people? I pulled my daughter out shortly after that.
The food was NEVER catered. The staff prepared the sub-par meals which included jelly sandwiches, chicken nuggets and beans and rice. There was more, but it was the same menu day after day, week after week and none of it was particularly healthy. What REALLY upset me about this was that the owners or directors NEVER communicated to the parents that the food was not catered. I had to find this out from a staff member. When I confronted the owner she told me it had 'slipped their minds' to tell parents. And even after I let them know how unacceptable that was, they NEVER sent notice to any of the other parents. So, when I'd be speaking to parents in passing after that, I'd mention that the food wasn't catered and I kept getting, "WHAT?! Are you kidding me?!" So, I guess it really wasn't about it slipping their minds - they simply didn't want anyone to know. Imagine thinking your child is getting healthy, organic catered meals and they're NOT!
My daughter was there for a year and did not go on ONE field trip.
In all, I would say these people had good intensions with really a bad execution of all of them. read more