After touring several day care centers, we settled on Creative Minds in Happy Valley for 3 days a week care for our infant daughter (12 weeks at start time).
The good: Center security and policies seem adequate for relatively safe care of a large number of kids. Care prices are competitive for services provided.
The bad: Withdrawal period and fee policy. C'mon folks, a 60 day withdrawal notice, regardless of reason for withdrawal, during which all fees must be paid? If you had no-one on your wait list, that would be a reasonable policy. But, with the demand you have, why stick it to folks who decide day care isn't the right fit, especially if we decide day care isn't safe for our child's health based upon 3 days and a severe illness?
At the end of our first week, our daughter spiked a bad fever, cough, runny nose, diarrhea, and vomiting. Yes, we'd been told day care was a petri dish, and yes we expected a snotty nose and frequent colds, but not a 103.5 fever and a trip to the ER for difficulty breathing. This issue isn't limited to one particular day care. We feel we made a mistake by enrolling our daughter at such a young age and that staying in day care is not safe for her health, and have done everything we can to be up front with the program manager about our decisions and why.
So, we pulled our baby out after only 3 days, not wanting to pay for day care time we weren't using (not going to send our snotty-nosed coughing kid to day care, though many are already there), and figuring that we'll wait for day care until baby's immune system is more robust. Our doctor also advised that summer is a better time for introduction to day care, when there aren't so many nasty bugs being vectored around.
Creative Minds Program Director Cynthia told us that "we couldn't receive a refund for February, but that she was able to get a partial waiver of the March fee, and would provide a full waiver for March if she was able to fill the slot we vacated." Fair enough. However, we just received an invoice for the full March fee, and upon stopping by to pick up our daughter's belongings, there were new kids in the room. I'm waiting to hear back from the regional director to see how they respond.
Update: Two months later. Creative Minds stuck to their commitment and after filling our vacated slot, they waived March fees. Kudos to them for sticking to their word and being fair. We've found a great nanny for the time being and will probably re-investigate day care options at a later date. Buyer beware about day care contracts in general. read more