I know this is long, but if you are looking for childcare for your children I would take the time…read moreto read it.
Our boys were enrolled in Best Friends for three weeks and I am beyond relieved to have them removed and in another daycare.
Prior to becoming an educator, I worked in an excellent childcare facility for ten years. I believe that a parent who has no experience in childcare may not notice issues or know any better, or may think some things are "normal" that are not.
First, let me start by speaking to what I feel is the integrity of the child care director. After reading on their website that they have been given five stars in Great Start to Quality, and are the "highest ranked" program in Oakland County, I looked them up on the site to find they do not have any stars. After contacting GSTQ to ask why, I found that her in home daycare had been given five stars but her center has not been rated yet. Using her in home rating in order to get more parents into her child care center, which is currently not rated, is dishonest. They updated their site to state they were in their new location so certainly they could have edited the information about their star rating at the same time.
If you browse the Google reviews of this childcare facility, you will see that, in response to a poor review, the director Tori violates parent/caregiver privacy by publicly stating discipline issues with the parent's child. This is highly unprofessional and demonstrates a lack of respect for the privacy of past clients. Publicly sharing discipline issues also violates FERPA which i believe extends to state licensed child care facilities. I would expect a professional to remain respectful of a child's privacy even when they receive a negative review, particularly on a public forum.
The program director, Tori, is expected to facilitate learning for young people, particularly those in early literacy. However, when students are doing activities with directions on the white board, words are often misspelled and in speaking, poor grammar skills are used. This is an issue in parent communications as well, which concerns me when my children are learning how to speak properly from the adults they are around all day.
In our three weeks at the facility, the daycare closed on several occasions. Two were the result of snow days, which I understood completely. However, two were due to it being cold outside. The director stated that the building furnace was unable to keep the building warm. This is not a weather issue, it is a building issue that needs to be remedied as we live in Michigan and it gets cold. However, she still charged parents for those days as if it were a weather issue or "act of god." Parents still have to work when it is cold, so buildings need to be capable of staying warm. If the building can not stay warm then the onus should fall on the director to bear the financial responsibility of closing.
The infant room, where my two year old was, was very damp and smelled strongly of something like wet paint. Every day at pickup the smell would hit me as soon as I opened the door to that room. Also, I was told that they would assist my son in potty training by taking him to the bathroom every 15 minutes. This did not happen.
My four year old was in the big kids room. The activities seemed developmentally appropriate for the younger kids; however I told them when we registered that my son was working on reading and kindergarten prep. They told me they would work with him and instead had him doing activities that were not scaffolded to his current ability level and were therefore too easy.
The culmination of our frustration was in our final week there, when I arrived to find my son and another child standing in separate corners facing the wall, with their backs to their peers, apparently because they were not cleaning up. This consequence is not only archaic but also highly inappropriate. It shames the child, confines them and excludes them from the learning activities being completed. It is punishment, not a consequence, and I would expect individuals who are trained in child development to know how incredibly inappropriate this is.
We began looking for new childcare immediately when this happened, but then were given a termination notice without reason. This, again, demonstrates the lack of professionalism of the owner, as a good program director would sit down with a parent to explain their reasoning. They would not just leave an envelope up front and hide from the parent at pickup. When I asked via email for her reason, she deflected and would not provide one. I suspect that her reason has to do with the fact that I know enough about daycare to know that they are not good at their jobs, whereas a typical parent may not know any better. I was fine with the termination as we were leaving anyway, but the lack of professionalism in how it was done is very unfortunate and indicative of how this facility is run.
