It has taken me a while to write this review. I wanted to see if time would improve my view of the school. Unfortunately, it has not. My son attended La Petite Academy from December 2016- March 2017. He attended the toddler room as he was around 18 months during starting. I first want to say that this was my first real experience with a childcare facility, so maybe my expectations were too high. However, I just truly feel what happened was not acceptable.
I went and did a tour of the school prior to enrollment but it was during nap time. I was unable to view the inside of the room so prior to dropping him off, my sister took my son in to introduce him to the staff. Her thoughts were "they seem nice, but all of the kids noses were snotty." I thought to give them a chance since the reviews were high and they seemed nice.
My son attended twice a week for 1.5-4 hours a day. I am in college so the schedule depended upon whenever my class ended. Due to this, there was no set schedule so the staff did not know when to expect me. I picked up my son one day after TWO and a HALF HOURS, and was completely and utterly APPALLED by the appearance of his nose! There was dried on snot, his nose was clogged, and it was running down DRIED into his mouth. (Mind you, it was allergy season. He was NOT sick or they would have not even let me drop him off.) I scooped him up and ran out of the building, thinking I was just going to clean it and deal with it. As I strapped him in his car seat, I got madder and madder. (((I can post the picture if needed)))
I started cleaning his nose and thought this is ridiculous. I marched him back inside and spoke to the Assistant Director. I showed her his face. I told her this was unacceptable. I informed her that I purchase and provided them wipes, so if I needed to give them additional wipes to make sure his nose was being wiped then I needed to be informed of that. I explained that this wasn't the first time I noticed children with their noses like this but that I would be unacceptable for it to happen to my son again. She apologized, told me she agreed, and that she would speak to the staff.
I almost unenrolled him that same day. However, I tried to understand that with schools I should attempt to give them a chance. The next time I picked him up the Assistant Director apologized again and told me she spoke with the staff. I believed her to be genuine and was ready to let the situation pass until the Director Debi came out of her office. She told me that the reason his nose was like that was because he was sleeping. She said that is the only reason why. She made bunches of excuses defending her staff which made me understand that she truly did not care about how my son was cared for. That left a bad taste in my mouth and I noticed the staff being on edge whenever I came in.
Now for the final straw. I made my payments directly to the Assistant Director at the beginning of every week. Even in the event my class was cancelled, I always paid the full week. I never had any issues or was ever late on ANY payment. I received an email saying my payment was late. Upon paying the next day, I made the payment to the Director herself. I asked how any payment was past due and she explained it was an error on her part and that she took it off. I then informed her that I was going out of town the next week and that my son wouldn't attend. She informed me I would need to pay half of the tuition for that week. I told her that was fine. She took my payment and I dropped my son off.
While out of town, I received an email from the Asst Director inquiring about not seeing my son this week. I explained I had informed the Director that we would be out of town. She must have forwarded it to the Director who responded stating "Ok that's fine, we just need the reservation fee for the week then." She stated that she needed the fee today in order to save his spot.
I informed her that I had no way to pay them online (it was never set up correctly) which I why I paid in person every single week. I also informed her that she could have taken my payment when I paid her directly the week previous. I also informed her that it was not necessary to repeatedly threaten to give up his spot for such a minute amount. Her emails were quite unpleasant and at that point I knew I could never bring him back there.
***I do want to note that I greatly appreciate the teacher Nicole. She took care of my son and made him feel comfortable in an environment he was not used to and did not like. I greatly appreciate her for that and just wanted to note that it was not the treatment of my son that warranted this bad review. But the management staff.***