About the Provider
Description: HIGHLAND ACADEMY LLC is a Child Care Center in PONDERAY ID. This child care center helps with children in the age range of 2 months to 8 years. The provider also participates in a subsidized child care program.
Additional Information: Financial Assistance: Multi-child discount.
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My advice to parents considering Highlands is to go elsewhere. I write this review to protect other parents and children. The first problem we had with this daycare is dishonest billing practices (or, if giving the benefit of the doubt, extremely negligent and error prone billing). Our first bill was almost twice that of the correct amount and when the error was brought to the attention of the owner, she didn’t apologize for the error and attempted to brush the issue under the rug. In addition, expect to be nickel and dimed with fees on top of the monthly tuition. Enrollment fee of $75, monthly diapering fees, and on and on, and don’t you dare not pack a lunch big enough for a 300 pound football player (if you pack a lunch that is merely sized appropriately for your child the preschool lunch police, ie. Kimberly, will reprimand you). Another problem we initially encountered with this daycare was that our kids stopped going to bed on time on days they went to daycare. We normally have a bedtime of 8pm but my kids were not going to sleep until 10 or 11pm on daycare days for the first month they attended daycare. I found out that they were taking multiple naps at daycare but once I asked the owner to please respect their regular routine of 1 two hour nap per day, we stopped having a problem with this, although I got the feeling she was resentful of the fact I brought it up. Another problem is the daycare is routinely understaffed to the point where my kids did not always receive adequate supervision. My youngest came home with bite marks more than once and instead of sufficiently addressing the issue, the daycare minimized the problem and failed to notify me of injuries even after I asked them on multiple occasions. In addition, I received calls on several occasions to pick up my “sick” child when the child was not in fact sick but had an asthmatic cough and on other occasions was teething with a runny nose and on another occasion had runny poop with no other symptoms (my best guess is they are understaffed on these days and look for kids they can label as “sick”). Expect to be called to pick up your “sick” child about 25% of the time because this daycare does not follow their own sick policy. And yes, expect to pay full price for those days too. Oh, and my kids are only exposed to other people and kids on the days they go to daycare, so when they are actually sick, they get it from daycare in the first place! The most concerning negative component of this daycare is that if the owner does not like you for whatever reason or you bring complaints to her attention directly, be prepared for her to retaliate by contacting CPS with allegations towards you! CPS informed us that the daycare complained about the cleanliness of our children (they get a bath every night). Instead of first bringing their concern to us which would be the Christian thing to do (but wouldn’t make much sense since it was a lie told by daycare management in the first place), they actually filed a CPS report against us for allegedly not keeping the kids clean and for not packing the Highlands version of an “appropriate” lunch! Of course, the allegations were declared to be unfounded as CPS found our home and our children to be quite clean and well cared for but this is a very real threat if you allow your children to attend here and you offend the owner. Other more minor issues involve routinely loosing children’s belongings and the daycare being closed several days out of the year (but those days must still be paid for). However, these are quite minor compared to the other major problems this daycare has. Finally, when I gave over a week’s notice as a courtesy to the daycare and informed them of my children’s last day, the owner (Kimberly) told me that they were no longer allowed to come to Highlands, not even one more day to say goodbye to their teachers and friends. In short, the female owner here is extremely unprofessional, petty, revenge seeking, and immature (although there are also some really wonderful teachers she employs). I truly wish the owner of this daycare had been willing to resolve issues one on one in a private manner but has chosen not to by going to CPS so I felt the only thing I could do is to warn other parents to STAY AWAY!