My family and I love La Petite. The Director really cares about our children and making sure she is…read moresupporting the teachers in the classroom. She greets us every more and a small conversation in the afternoon. My daughter's teachers are excited to see her and greet us with a smile and my daughter gets a hug. It was a smooth transition and the teachers are really caring. I love the live camera feed it helps us stay connected to her learning. They have made it an easy transition to go back to work.

I preface my review with that I did not send my child here (yet) but I went for a tour. The staff…read morewas pleasant but it was clear they are trying to staff up and get more kids at this center. I liked that the staff seemed generally friendly, they have a meal calendar for the kids, and the preschool looked active and lively. The infant -toddler room kind of looked sad though. Kind of inactive and quiet, I guess is the best way to describe it. And I have a toddler. It was a small room and I think it would be better to separate the two rooms but I think it might be a staffing issue? Either way maybe down the road I may consider them, as it is a close enough location which may suit our childcare needs. But nothing really wowed me from that visit for a toddler.

Veronica and the staff at this location have been so welcoming and helpful with our transition to…read moredaycare! We love the multiple updates we receive and the activities the kids engage in!

Please read the reviews at the Complaint Board site before enrolling your child at this center:…read more http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/kindercare-gum-street-unprofessional-c651515.html

I regret enrolling my daughter here. Despite committing early (touring in Feb 2024, paying a…read moredeposit, and submitting all forms), the school's lack of communication, disorganization, and disregard for basic safety and hygiene created a deeply frustrating and emotionally exhausting year. From misplaced incident reports and unaddressed injuries, to administrative errors and tone-deaf leadership, this school consistently failed to provide a safe, transparent, and developmentally supportive environment. My daughter came home with swollen lips, unexplained bruises, missing shoes, and stories of peer mistreatment -- with no formal documentation provided, despite repeated requests. These were not isolated events; I have video/photo documentation, and other parents voiced similar concerns in meetings. The director's conduct was both inappropriate and hypocritical -- once sending me a photo of my 3-year-old with paper in her mouth and demanding I "talk to her about telling the truth" over a harmless joke (gum from dad), while gaslighting parents about emails that were never sent. We were made to feel like the problem, when in reality the school's tech systems, operations, and staffing plans were simply broken. Staffing was unstable -- the lead teacher left for maternity leave with no real succession plan. Parents were informed of changes through hallway gossip before any official notice. Other red flags included: * Poor nap hygiene (child's skin broke out); * No proper underwear/clean clothes sent home; * Unsafe food handling policies; * Lost orthopedic shoes due to mishandling after an accident -- only replaced after escalation; * Inconsistent behavioral reporting, with my child being singled out for normal 3-year-old behavior, while aggressive peer behavior went unaddressed all year. The school showed a lack of respect for working parents, sending critical updates (like school closures) late at night and offering no accessible options for required events (no childcare, no virtual options, last-minute notices). They ran meetings on free Zoom accounts that cut off mid-call, used free Gmail accounts, and misunderstood basic tools like unlisted YouTube links. My concerns were dismissed, incident reports were never filed, and when I reported this to the county, I was told it was "too late." Given how long and hard I tried to resolve these issues internally -- and my documentation of events -- this only added to the heartbreak. In hindsight, I should have trusted my gut and pulled my child out much earlier. If you're a parent considering this school, please ask hard questions about staff turnover, behavior policies, safety reporting, and operational transparency. And if something feels off -- trust yourself.

Will only state the facts that lead to this review…read more.. In preparation for our move to VA this year, my family and I have been searching for a suitable Montessori school within this area. After speaking with Cardinal several times via the phone we felt that this might be a great option. A few weeks ago, my wife had scheduled a school tour and staff meet with Cardinal's senior coordinator (not official title) to allow us to see a routine day at the school and view its operation. We scheduled the tour for a Friday, which we were told was not "normal" but would be allowed given the fact that my family had to drive 5+ hours to get there. The tour was locked on that Monday with a 0930 start time on Friday. We had no other communication from the school throughout the week and on Thursday afternoon, we hit the road after I had gotten off work and arrived in VA just after midnight. We were up the following Friday morning and arrived at Cardinal at 0910 to an empty parking lot, locked building, lights off, and no one on site... We sat, waited, and attempted to call anyone with no luck and no response. It was about 0930 when finally a car pulled up and a women was dropped off. She didn't engage us at all and simply walked into the school. My wife proceeded to knock on the door and was met by said women who appeared to be cleaning. My wife explained our situation to the women who simply laughed, nodded, and said that the school was closed due to a maintenance emergency. A few minutes later, another women arrived who identified herself as a teacher. We calmly explained how we were scheduled to meet with a Ms. Igera for our tour but had not been able to reach her or anyone else. The teacher looked surprised and quickly reiterated that the school had been closed for the last few days. She then pulled out her phone and said she would call the "school owner" who was already on her way to Cardinal. At approx. 0945 the school co-owner arrived and welcomed us inside. We explained, again, who we were and why we were there. She quickly apologized and then explained how the school closed on Wednesday and Thursday due to plumbing issues. They had sent all the students and staff home and were now back (Friday morning) in order to clean for the reopening on Monday. She didn't ask any further about the botched tour appointment, but rather tried to go right into her pitch for the school. At the end of the walk-through, we were on our way out the door when we asked for Ms. Igera to call us about the clear failure in communication. The Co-owner said she would, glorified her staff, and said she hoped we would consider them when we moved... Fast forward 2+ weeks later....we got that call.... And it was to schedule yet another tour at the school. Nothing more. The level of complete disregard, disrespect, and sheer unprofessionalism that went into this waste of time is truly astounding. For better perspective, here is a better overview of all my family and I sacrificed in order to simply VISIT the school and observe its operation. - late night drive 5+ hours after work. - pulled my 4yo daughter out of current school in order to see the Cardinal school and meet the teachers. - my wife is 7 months pregnant at the time of all this. And she had to make all these movements. - I scheduled a full day away from work to make this trip happen. - spent hundreds on gas to make the round trip. Along with paying for a hotel in order to stay overnight... The Cardinal school may do just fine in some things, but I find it hard to imagine what. The coordination, communication, and lack of accountability is frightening. To make a commitment to an outside family who is willing to spend thousands on the betterment of their children's care and education and then not even have the courtesy to communicate a simple appointment change is unacceptable. I would HIGHLY encourage any family seeking a Montessori program to move on and explore other options (military families or otherwise). I have nothing negative to post about the teachers who work here, simply the lack of efficient and effective administrative overview of the school itself. This was not a sophisticated encounter, but rather a simple and what I would image routine engagement with an interested party. If this is how they treat an unaffiliated party, how do they respond under higher stress situations? Who actually maintains the schools appointments? Who is charge of registrations? Etc... Bottom line, keep searching. There are other great options within this region of VA, as my family and I learned. So disappointed to leave a review of this manner on a Montessori related establishment, but title alone does not guarantee quality. I truly hope this review can bring about a greater awareness of the low standard practices at Cardinal.

Consider this daycare if you want to spend $100 to be ghosted…read more... We are a military family who moved to the DMV last year and were expecting our first baby in the spring. When we figured out where we would be living we started our search for daycares and wound up deciding to do a tour of this daycare. The daycare seems very nice and I really liked what they had to offer so we decided to get on the waitlist for the summer. We were directed to go to their website and pay a $100 waitlist fee. We were also told that because we were military we shouldn't have a hard time getting into the school and the summer had good turnover. When the summer came we contacted the school because we were a couple months away from needing daycare and had not heard a single thing from them. I called, spoke to someone who claimed they could help with enrollment and they confirmed they had us on the waitlist and they said yes, you definitely will have a spot even if it's maybe a week after you requested.I followed up again a couple weeks later and heard the same thing but nothing was ever solidified, it was always don't worry, we'll call you. Today, 10 months after my baby was born I can say I've never heard from them. They just took our $100 and never followed through. Being a first time mom and being stressed out about going back to work I didn't want to continue to stress out about maybe getting into this daycare and having to hound them so we decided to shop around. We found a fantastic daycare that we love in downtown Alexandria. It still irritates me that they took $100 from us and didn't bat an eye. I knew going into it that it was a non-refundable $100, however I expected at the very least for me to hear about getting in or not- even if it was a rejection. It's frustrating how stressful it was for me when it didn't need to be so be warned- prepare to have to keep on top of this daycare or even just waste $100! Good luck!

Our two daughters spent 4 years at Bright Start, and my wife and I were amazed at how quickly they…read moreprogressed. My oldest could recognize letters and numbers, as well as perform simple addition before she turned 4. My youngest has a vocabulary far exceeding her age. Neither my wife nor I can take credit for their progress, all credit goes to Bright Start's one-of-a-kind staff. I'm so glad we put my daughters here, it's easily the best day care in the area.

We love American Day School! Our daughter has thrived in the infants classroom. She gets so excited…read morewhen she sees her teachers and classmates at drop off and she's always in a great mood when we pick her up. Her teachers are incredibly caring and loving and have helped our daughter grow into a happy toddler. She's learned so much at ADS and as parents, we feel so confident in the school and the community. Highly recommend!

When looking for childcare, times can get a bit stressful. As a family, we wanted to have our kids…read morein a comfortable environment where they would feel safe and taken care of. I am a military veteran and we were looking for childcare under the 'Childcare Aware' program. Within this program, we were blocked into looking at certain childcare centers and what we discovered is that is not necessarily a model built to take care of each family as an individual. As we know, there is no cookie cutter fit for each child into a particular center. Knowing this, we decided to seek childcare outside of the 'Childcare Aware' program and to go with one that fit our family.....our child. I can tell you American Day School (ADS), under the leadership of Ms. Pilar Mackay, Ms. Nicole and the rest of the educators, exceeded our expectations. Every morning while dropping off our daughter she was greeted (as well as us) as if she was the most important person around. They do this with each and every kid. We know the love and safety is a focus there because every time our daughter would see a friend of hers outside of school they would always run to each other and give the best hugs. They were always soooo excited to see one another. At ADS their goal is to provide a positive environment where the children develop a sense of community, are confident, and have fun learning. Having our daughter experience ADS set her up for success when she reached Kindergarten. During her time at ADS she developed her counting well beyond 100, was completing math equations, knew all of her letters (capital and lower case), and was writing her name. Kindergarten has been a breeze for her. She's been very confident and a leader in her class and the teachers have continued to work with her on her math equations once they noticed she was already performing well enough at them. There is no doubt from us that our daughter could her gone to first grade after her Pre-K year with ADS. Our daughter spent a total of two years with ADS (Preschool 2 and Pre-K). If you are looking for a great head start for you kid(s), I think you owe it to yourselves and your little one(s) to give ADS a look.

I really wanted to like this place! But after 3 weeks, I know it's not a place I'd trust with the…read moreoverall well-being of my child. My enthusiasm enrolling my child at a "good" daycare based on reviews and recommendations died essentially the first day my child was officially there. The first and biggest disappointment is the fact the teachers there appear to be disengaged and uninterested. When I noticed there were 6 new babies out of a class of 12 starting the same day and many of them crying essentially every time I made a stop at the center throughout the first week, I was particularly interested in how they would comfort the children. They didn't! That was pretty disappointing as I consider the emotional well-being of my child as important, if not more important than being fed and having clean diapers. My child absolutely hated that place-pulling me away from the door when we got there, having restless nights full of nightmares, losing skills he previously had etc on top of crying the most he's ever had basically all the time at LAP starting from drop off. That made me decide to spend more time there to observe what's causing him to be that uncomfortable. I spent an hour observing everything they were doing. I also paid attention to all the other kids. There wasn't a single child who finished even 25% of the lunch presented that day but they would just push the milk to them and lunch is done. Then I received an email later that day my child who barely had a bite of a taco "ate most/everything". I could see the teachers laughing at me and shaking heads I was there to watch. As far as I'm concerned, I'm paying to get the service and entitled to watch what my helpless child has to go through. I obviously didn't care about how they felt about me exercising my rights. Besides, when folks are professional and confident of their work, they would want to show it off. But clearly the LAP team would rather get away with their mediocre childcare away from the parents. I'm watching all this through a tinted window btw. Then they turn off the light from the inside knowing that the hallway Iight was still on and that my child would see me (and cry). If you need more lows than that, keep reading. I've also witnessed (2 consecutive days) that they let the kids watch songs on an iPad. When I brought it up to the owner, it was explained to me it was "just one song in the morning". I mean I'm not there to monitor the entire day so I'm supposed to believe they're telling the truth. Also, ahead of enrollment, they asked me to fill out many pages of questions. Apparently, the teachers never received the forms. Here I was thinking they asked those questions because they wanted to understand the child as an individual but the reality is they didn't even communicate to the teacher my child's food allergies. Seriously! When I dropped my child even after 3 weeks, there was not a single teacher my child gravitated towards the slightest bit. When I ask them the toys he plays with during the day, none of the teachers would know-not pay attention to the kids obviously. The reason I had decided daycare would be better than home was for the social interaction. However, I quickly figured they lacked attentiveness to meet that. For example, there was one time my child had the water cup out of reach. He pointed to it multiple times but the teacher who sat next to him was dazed and didn't pass the cup. Children develop skills based on the response they get around them. If they are consistently dismissed, they will grow up to be robotic and disengaged who don't get common sense. If you want a place, any place to leave your child, this place might do it. However, if you are trying to raise a well rounded human being whose emotional and psychological needs are met, I don't think LAP team has the skills or knowledge to offer that. Although my child would never sleep more than an hour (as opposed to 3 hours at home), eat almost nothing, to me the emotional negligence is the ultimate factor I've pulled my child out of this worrisome place.

I have to knock off a star. Our first year here we had an amazing teacher. And then we moved into a…read moreclass where teachers and assistants were clearly over it and disengaged. They left at the end of the year. The teacher in our new classroom was great but also left. And now we're in one that's just okay. There are some really amazing people that work here and the programming is beyond excellent. But a few teachers in our experience seem burned out irritated and overwhelmed. The daily napslips that are supposed to provide updates on nap time and food eaten are clearly on auto send and innacurrate. If my kid were younger, less verbal and more dependent on emotional engagement they wouldn't go here but they are a bit older and independent now. They can tell me what they ate and how they napped themselves. And they are just in love with a few of the assistants. The shows and education are also top notch.

I had the worst experience with Springfield KinderCare. On November 20th I had the most horrific…read moreexperience of my life. I am only writing about this now because I am now slowly making my way to dealing with what happened emotionally. It's still even very hard to talk about. On November 19th I reached out to the school director Shiela , explaining to her how I was struggling financially to keep my son in the pre school program. I walked in with a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes. It was hard enough to deal with money problems but then to make them public for my sons pre school made it worse. She explained to me that she couldn't do anything that she needed two weeks notice. And offered me a "deal" to pay for that week and half of the following week but he could not attend next week and then he could be pulled from the program. Seeing as that's all they said they could do I understood and left feeling crappy about the whole thing. The very next day my son goes back to KinderCare. I missed a call from the school because I was at work and didn't have my phone on me. Then I received a call from my child's father at work saying that there was an accident at school. My son had smashed his face and lost two teeth. The assistant Director Ms Chris couldn't even tell me what happened. Stating that no teacher saw what happened. She kept changing her story from he fell and hit his mouth on the end of the slide to he bumped into a class mate. The teacher Ms Zarmina who was suppose to be watching the kids play on the playground saw nothing. When I questioned her about what happened she stated "there are too many kids". How is it possible that I am suppose to trust a Kindercare to watch my son when the teacher is even saying there is too many kids. All of a sudden Ms . Chris the assistant director was able to clear my invoice for that week and the following week. Now there was no problem pulling him from the program. It took my son smashing his face to be able to pull him from the program. I felt no compassion from Ms . Chris for what had happened to my son. He had the biggest wounds in his gums two teeth came right out all the way to the root. When I asked my son what happened he stated that his teacher Ms Zarmina was talking and not watching him and his friends play. He actually fell down the stairs and smashed his mouth. His gums were all bruised and all Ms.Chris could tell me is "boys will be boys " and " accidents happen". I am a vet tech and I have better bed side manner than that. There was no compassion. Can you imagine dropping off your four year old to preschool only to pick him up with a bloody bruised mouth and two teeth missing. He is going to lose a third tooth as well it's very loose. He was put on a course of antibiotics and pain medication. Luckily they are his baby teeth and he will have teeth come in eventually but his dentist states they won't come in for another two years !! My son won't have teeth for two years. And it is not Aweee he's so cute he lost his teeth , I see my son with out those teeth and think about how he lost them. How I trusted KinderCare and how I let my son down for trusting them. I would not recommend this location to anybody at all. The only positive thing I have to say about this KinderCare is that one of the teachers Ms. Michelle actually cares. She was not present for his accident but gave me most compassion that not even the school director nor assistant director could give. My son is spending the holidays and his 5th birthday with no teeth because of KinderCare. My family and I could not be more disappointed, and hurt by what happened.

I've had my kid there for the past year. This was out 1st daycare and everyone loves my son and he…read moreloves them. Check out the Open house on April 21 from 1-3pm. If you mention my name you will get a $200 credit! Set up a time to take a tour! My son,napped the 1st day. They are so helpful with my son's picky eating. They have food and you can see the menu. The bathrooms are in the classroom so kids can go when they want vs going into a hallway. They have karate and soccer that comes in during the school day. You can pay with discover. Can download the form online for FSA. They are open most holidays. If you take a vacation for a week they'll take half off.. They also can drop off and pick up school age children. They have parents night out on April 27th from 6:30 to 9:30 it's only $35 for one child in 24 the second one. So you already know them you know that they're with other kids instead of you trying to find a babysitter enough time for dinner and a movie. My hubby was weary as well so we toured different places and he gave it a thumbs up which means alot!

We adore the Prince William Academy in Woodbridge, Virginia. From the teachers to the students to…read morethe challenging educational modules. The school curriculum has created an extensive and well-organized Academic program. It fosters sound leadership skills while learning in a creative and structured environment of kindness, and responsibility. Good efforts by all Prince William Academy Leadership, Teachers, and Staff. We are very happy with our child attending the Prince William Academy in Woodbridge, Virginia.

The middle school failed my child this school year. There's a notorious group of students that…read moresystematically bully new kids or someone outside their circle and the worst part, these students are favored among teachers. Multiple complains to the principal resulted in NOTHING! Only a check mark talk with the offenders and the vicious cycle goes on. It's a disgrace that teachers only promote their favorites to win competitions like Science fair. The middle school drastically lacked any fun or engaging events, fundraisers or activities that encouraged team work and inclusion of parents. There was only one field trip throughout the year and no promised end of year concert that even public schools have. The end of year award ceremony was unfairly selective. Throughout the year we got Zero photos from any teacher showing a school day, so it feels like this year just fell out equation with no memories to look back to. There's no graduation ceremony for 5th graders either, which they truly deserve. Since the new owner took over, the school environment (especially in upped grades) is rapidly deteriorating. And it's not surprising, the owner lives outside the country and rarely shows up. My gut feeling was right when I checked the school website before we enrolled and it was generic. And that's how this year felt, generic! A generic website with no teacher names, stock photos of students, there's nothing there that shows actual student life or curriculum or shows any photos of the teachers. This place is about squeezing every dollar they can from paying parents, while failing on delivering the fair support and equal opportunities every student deserves.