My son attended this academy for a few months and our experience was poor overall. I will point out the positive aspects of my family's experience first. The facility itself is clean. In fact the cleanliness and small class sizes is what we initially liked about the school.
That said, the lack of staff control in the morning is alarming, the inability for staff to follow the simple instructions pertaining to feeding time, and the fact that I found chewed up chewing gum in my son's car seat(i'm allergic so my wife nor I have gum in our home) upon picking him up from school was the final straw for our family.
Regarding the lack of staff control in the morning. On several instances when my wife dropped our infant son off in the morning prior to work, the student to instructor( not enough teachers were there yet in either instance) was high and she struggled with controlling the students. In one instance another parent had to stop a child(not hers) from running out the door. When we informed the owner, her response was "thank god that parent was there". Oh and there was an attempt by the director via letter sent home to acknowledge the chaos in the morning and that the school would work to remedy it going further.
After addressing several times the miscommunication with feeding times in the infant classroom, the staff did create a daily checklist for parents to complete and staff to keep a copy of. We were excited because it initially appeared as if our concerns would be addressed with a tracking tool, even though it required us writing out daily specific instructions. So you can imagine our frustration when my wife had to repeatedly inform the staff that they weren't following the instructions. (e.g. We provided a plastic bib for feeding times, yet repeatedly the bib wasn't used-we were told that they would work to improve this).
But of all things, the final straw for us was the chewing gum I found in my infant's car seat when picking my son up for the day. Being that I'm allergic to gum, I initially was mortified upon realizing that fully chewed chewing gum was in my son's car seat. I immediately notified his teacher, who informed me that though she was chewing gum, she didn't drop any chewed gum in his car seat. I found that odd because I was merely making her aware of what I discovered, and relieved that my son, who I was holding at the time, wasn't yet placed in the car seat to find the gum and put it in his mouth.
After gathering my child and leaving, I sent an email to the owner, well at least the owner, who I later found is "one of many owners". This owner promptly called me and apologized and asked what solution did I have in mind and assured me that it was an accident and had to have belonged to a parent who also placed their child's car seat in the same area, or a child accompanying a parent, or I'm sure you get the never ending drift. She assured me it couldn't have been one of her staff because due to the rules of the church who's space they rent, no staff is allowed to chew gum. I listened and then informed her of the comment my child's instructor made pertaining to chewing gum and it wasn't her, to which the owner mumbled and then reverted to explaining how it wasn't intentional.
Intentional or not, this "school", which also never teaches the spanish or sign language, or other programs they list when you sign up lacks on control and accountability. You'll get a lot of follow up via email, and pseudo professionalism about "how they're there to help you". But there won't be any consistency, follow up or accountability.
Stay far away... read more
