Top notch school and really excels in working with Special Needs children if you are so lucky to…read moreget Ms. Prado and her team and Dale is exceptional.

Burton valley is the best school i have ever been I just finished 5th grade and I going to miss my…read moreteachers and friends I was always welcome education was always the best I really like this school

We are Grandparents to 3 children at this wonderful school. We have attended many great events here…read moreand volunteered in the classrooms. We have witnessed first hand the beautiful community and Catholic education that is fostered at this super school. Our Grandchildren are thriving. We also educated our grown 3 children with Catholic education and are Blessed today with healthy wonderful happy families. The sacrifice is totally worth it. John and Jill Brunold

Please note: Many positive reviews on yelp were written under previous school and parish…read moreleadership. Our children attended this school for 11 years, and there is now new administration and church leadership. Our experience with the current leadership has been dramatically different. We considered this school and parish our second home. We volunteered, supported school events, raised our children here, and trusted the community to reflect the Catholic values of compassion, mercy, forgiveness, and human dignity. That trust was shattered when our family faced its first and only significant disciplinary issue. We expected accountability, guidance, and an opportunity for our child to learn from a mistake. Instead, we experienced exclusion, fear-driven decision-making, and we felt increasingly unwelcome by the school and church leadership. It became clear that the current leadership lacked the experience to handle the situation and, more importantly, the humility to recognize its shortcomings. We believe their actions fell short of standard education requirements and practices and caused significant and lasting harm to our children and family. Catholic education should emphasize mercy, redemption, reconciliation, and the belief that a child is more than a single mistake. Instead, we experienced what felt like judgment, exclusion and institutional self-protection. The decisions felt punitive and disproportionate, with little meaningful dialogue, transparency, or compassion. Despite many families advocating on our behalf for a different approach, leadership ultimately turned its back on our family. What remains most painful is the disconnect between how we were treated and the values this school and parish claim to teach.

Lots of learning being served fresh daily…read more The students are all above average and destined for greatness. Teacher are super-nice and funny. Playground recently redone with new swings, rubbery-cushioned ground, spinny ladder, rock climbing thingy. So weird they took out the monkey bars though!!

We truly cannot fully express the amount of joy, comfort, and confidence we feel leaving our…read morechildren in the loving hands of White Pony Preschool. When searching for the perfect preschool, we had very clear priorities - and White Pony was the only school that checked every box (for context, I'm an Excel-spreadsheet fanatic and a serious researcher - I visited many schools, observed classrooms/teachers, analyzed environments, and spoke with current and former parents across 15 preschools in Walnut Creek and Lafayette before choosing Meher Schools). Our top priorities were: 1. Teachers who genuinely practice kindness, patience, and love, creating a safe, nurturing environment that mirrors the care we provide at home. 2. A strong focus on kindness, emotional and spiritual development alongside academics, using the Nurtured Heart Approach to teach leadership, right from wrong, and strong values - something that truly matters in today's world. 3. A calm, orga, clean, and open environment inspired by Montessori/Waldorf principles, filled with music, dance, art, nature exploration, and joyful activities that spark curiosity and a love of learning. 4. Low teacher-to-student ratios with consistent, dedicated staff and minimal turnover. 5. The ease and convenience of reliable daycare availability and consistent school hours, which is invaluable for working parents and provides tremendous peace of mind. Our children have grown into calm, patient, loving, socially and emotionally intelligent individuals. They come home happy - singing songs, performing dances, and confidently demonstrating leadership skills such as speaking up, standing up for others, self-regulating ("resetting"), appreciating nature, sharing their finished "projects" from school, and truly loving life. We are incredibly grateful for the dependable, efficient, and communicative staff and teachers. Watching our children's growth, confidence, curiosity, and joy throughout their time at White Pony Preschool has been nothing short of amazing. We wholeheartedly and highly recommend White Pony Preschool to any parent looking for the very best for their child.

White Pony Preschool literally changed our lives- not just for my 4 year old son but for our…read morefamily. Prior to attending White Pony Preschool, my son experienced behavior difficulties. After the first day of school, he told me he loves White Pony and that he is so happy. We saw an immediate shift in his overall mood, a decrease in negative behaviors, increase in social skill development, an improvement in cooperative play and an increase his interest in attending school. White Pony preschool offered parent training in the nurtured heart approach and helped us as parents focus on the positive qualities within our son which in turn changed his behaviors at home. In less than a year our son went from a child who was bullied, who cried and did not follow instructions to a warm, empathetic, helpful boy with loving and kind friends. He developed compassion, empathy, a love for art, music and gardening and well developed manners of which I can take no credit for (I'm from New York). White Pony's teachers are experienced, loving, kind and dedicated to the growth of their students. The school's dedication to multi-cultural and diversity teaching has encouraged us as a family to learn and grow. This year my son was so excited to tell me all about Chinese New Year including a beautiful red lantern he made as well as festive art and music. Since my son has attended White Pony preschool he has expanded the foods that he will eat since White Pony serves healthy snacks as well as vegetables and fruits from the preschool garden. They also involve the children in making food as part of the learning. Thanks to White Pony preschool my son will now eat vegetable soup, berries, cucumber, and more. While this may not seem like a big deal to some parents, it meant the world to use as we had such a picky eater. At first, I wasn't sure if I wanted my son to attend a mixed age classroom until I saw how it impacted him. He loves mentoring the younger students and acting as the "helper" in guiding them to follow the teacher's instructions. The mix of ages helped him develop his self esteem and also develop a gentleness with children younger than him. I can go on and on but this is already a long review so I will end it on saying that we will be continuing with the Meher school and our son will go to Kindergarten. Lastly, we would like to publicly thank the teachers and staff at White Pony Preschool for all they have done for our son.

Unfortunately there is a lot of covert and overt forms of racism here. This is a major failure upon…read moreadministration which serves to breed even more stigma and discrimination toward marginalised communities. It's a shame that with access to so many resources to teach in a place like Lafayette that something as poisonous as racism is present and reinforced amongst this context where kids are supposed to be educated. It's sad and key players like Brian mangold and the owners of the Behavior Management Solutions Company (which has a contract with LUSD) and provides the school with "behavior therapists" (many of whom are not registered with the BACB, the credentialing authority who oversees those credentialed in Behavioral Psychology) do nothing to address the presence of racism and derogatory remarks which are race related on the campus. In addition, they recently rolled out their Counseling Enriched Classroom and it is not ethically up to standard, employees have chosen to leave because of this and parents have little to no awareness of what goes on in there. The director of LUSD hired the current Counseling Enriched Classroom teacher (Phillip Eddy) because they were friendly with one another, and the teacher came from from a non-public school which is a completely different setting, the teacher has little to no psychology knowledge / credentials and is "leading" the space (How can you pride yourself in providing trauma-informed care when you do not have the knowledge or skills to do so). I would consider all of this before allowing any kids to go into a space like this and choose better because the bar being so low is detrimental to their development.

They try to arrest your children for missing less than a third of a full school day. Not the best…read moreplace for insecure developing tweens if you ask me.

This was my elementary school and it honestly was amazing. I never had a teacher who was mean, a…read moreproblem that wasn't unsolved, or anything go wrong. Sure the occasional fight with a friend, but all in all it was an amazing place to go as I grew up. I have the best memories there.

What a great school! Thanks to all the wonderful teachers and volunteers for everything you've done…read morefor my babies.

Amazing full-time care and Montessori education for kids 3 months through Kinder right off the…read morefreeway in Lafayette. My oldest started at 13 months (we were on a waitlist, so reach out early!) and youngest started at 5 months (siblings get priority). My kids come home every day and surprise me with what they've learned at school. Things you'd never picture such young kids understanding. My oldest son (2.5) has made his first best friend there, which is the cutest thing to watch take place. We also do soccer on Sundays with about 5 kids from his class. I love the teachers, opportunity for as much or as little parent involvement as you'd like and the parent community as a whole (they do parent nights out every month as well as other fun events). My brother went there in the 80's and it's a staple in the community.

We enrolled our two-year-old at DVMS for the 2026-27 school year and paid $2,890 upfront, including…read morea $2,700 payment that DVMS's agreement specifically calls a "Last Month Tuition Deposit." The agreement also states that the tuition deposit "is applied to your FINAL DVMS invoice." Before we paid, we had asked DVMS for additional time. They declined, telling us in writing that they had "a significant number of families currently in our wait pool" and therefore could not hold the space without the deposit. Our circumstances later changed and we notified DVMS approximately 30 days before Theo was scheduled to start that he would not be attending. He never attended the school and therefore never had a final tuition invoice against which the "Last Month Tuition Deposit" could be applied. DVMS refused to return the money. Less than 24 hours after we notified them, they told us they could not backfill the opening because wait-pool families had already committed elsewhere. This was difficult to reconcile with their earlier written statement about the significant number of families in their wait pool, our two years on the waitlist, and general community knowledge that most never get into DVMS. We pointed out the language in their own agreement and asked them to identify any contractual provision stating that the "Last Month Tuition Deposit" instead functions as a forfeitable reservation fee when a child never attends. We also asked them to preserve records regarding the wait pool and efforts to fill the opening. They did not provide that information or refund the payment. Parents considering DVMS should understand this policy and the language of the enrollment agreement before paying the deposit. Our experience was that DVMS retained the full $2,890 despite our child never attending, approximately 30 days' notice before his scheduled start date, and the agreement expressly describing $2,700 of the payment as a last-month tuition deposit applied to the final invoice. We also learned that four families from DVMS moved their child to our current school in moraga in the last 30 days alone. It seems this may not be an isolated issue with how they operate.

Amazing experience I graduated as top of the class in 2015 id love to send my kids here one day,…read morethis school had a great impact on my life

My family really loves and appreciates this school. Our kindergartener is especially well served…read moreby the focus on growing his heart and caring for others, that CCJDS provides. The academics are well provided for as well, with light/basic computer coding classes brought down into the K-class as well, as an example. The educators are given time to study and improve their own teacher-craft, and we see the results of that education in our own's learning. We feel that the focus on balanced education that includes understanding how the kids can take care of the world in which they live is a beautiful and often-forgotten aspect of education, which is well fostered here. Thanks CCJDS!