Bright Horizons Fourth And Madison

From a former employee - Do not work here. Do not send your children here. There is a high turn over of employees for good reason... the administration. They hire good teachers, but cannot keep them due to lack of support, resources and general respect. If a teacher has a problem or difficulty in the classroom, the administration either ignores it or turns it back and blames the teacher, saying she is failing in the classroom... even when the teacher has a degree in early childhood.

Because it is a corporation, the extremely high amount of money is not going to your child's teacher. You would be better off hiring one of the teachers as a nanny, because then they could actually give your child some one-on-one attention. In other childcare centers, if one child is struggling, there is support given to the classroom so that the other children still get tended to. At the 4th and Madison Bright Horizons, there is no support, so one teacher has to deal with the child who is kicking and hitting and scratching her... and leaves the other 19 children with one teacher. One administrator told a teacher to go back into her classroom with a violent screaming child, because she "had a tour" and the child was "making too much noise." When money is the bottom line, it is not in the best interest of your child.

No matter how much the teachers here love your child, they cannot always offer what your child needs when there is no outside support and such high ratios. Look for centers that keep ratios low (1 to 6 or 1 to 8 is ideal) and actually have support staff available.

Other things you cannot do in this center:

1) Hang your child's artwork on the wall without a frame... yet the administration doesn't supply those frames. If a teacher tries to hang up your child's artwork anyway (because the child is excited and proud of it), the administration comes into the room before or after center hours and THROWS IT AWAY.

2) Face paint and shaving cream. Although it is used in many other centers without problem, and has great developmental benefits (imaginative play, letter writing, etc), this center is overly worried about allergies. 

3) Contact paper to create environments and enrichments for your child and their classroom. The director here just doesn't like it, so no one can use it. 

4) Coloring sheets. Despite building valuable small motor skills, the response when questioned is just "we don't do that here."

5) Sand and glitter in preschool. Because it might be a choking hazard. (It can be for younger children in large quantities, but by the time they get to preschool it is okay.)

Bottom line: there are TONS of great places out there to place your child. Just not this one.