Description: Located in the growing community of Holmen, Little Minds Learning Center is located just north of Hwy 53 and Hwy 35 on Linden Dr.
LMLC’s presence in the LaCrosse Valley has offered us a unique and privelidged opportunity to provide the LMLC Experience for the families and children in Holmen, WI. Under the direction of Emily Doblar, the center will become an integral part of the community while providing both an educational and affordable experience for children in Holmen.
Take a few moments to explore our website and schedule a tour to discover how LMLC provides the premier child development experience.
This review is detailed but if you’re not interested in all the details, here is a brief summary. The teachers were good for the most part but the staffing level is sub-par. There has been a lot of turnover at this new facility and the average experience level is low. While there are bright spots (some teachers), the ownership representation is exceedingly absent, especially considering the previously-mentioned factors (new facility, high turnover, low experience, etc.). Any concerns that we attempted to present to the management level (operations and ownership) were largely ignored and upon our insistence on receiving a response, those concerns were simply dismissed and/or explained away with flimsy and hollow excuses. We cannot recommend Little Minds Learning Center as our experience leads us to believe that the owners are seemingly only looking to maximize profits leaving their employees with little in terms of necessary resources.
The review spans the time period of January 2015 to mid-April 2015 and throughout that time, we encountered issues. The events herewith did not happen within a condensed time period but throughout our time with this facility.
Initially, we had issues with the billing department regarding a promotion the company was running to boost their enrollment. We were told we were going to get free tuition for each of our children for a certain period of time by the director of the facility but the corporate billing department maintained that the promotion was for only one child per family. They eventually relented and issued us the free tuition for both children however it took many emails and phone calls to make this happen, and even then, the improper amount of money was removed from our bank account initially. This could have been a red-flag regarding the level of communication between the ownership level and the fulfilment side. Additionally, their promises of yoga classes and Spanish classes for the children were never realized. To summarize, they certainly talk a good game but when push comes to shove, there is little to no follow-through.
There are to be cameras in each room which allow parents to log in through the Little Minds Learning Center website and view your child’s class but we constantly experienced issues not being able to log in or the cameras not being available. Additionally, upon opening a new room when enrollment expanded to a level that required it, the room didn’t have the promised camera. One of our children happened to be moving to that room and when pressed on it, the owner, Todd Barnhardt, stated that their cameras “come from Japan” and it takes 21 days to get them. Two things come to mind with this reasoning; 1.) if it’s such a hassle, why not order cameras for each room when setting up your facility and 2.) temporary cameras are fairly inexpensive. If you are going to use these cameras to sell your services, you should find a temporary fix or at least let parents know that there are no cameras available for a time period. There was nothing communicated to parents at all.
Additionally, each day there was to be a report on each child detailing the day’s activities, what food was served and how much was eaten, how long naps were, etc. They are available via the website as well but we regularly did not receive these. This was brought up MULTIPLE times to the director and it was never fully addressed as it continued up to our last day there. It was presented to us that no one else was experiencing this issue and suggested that the forms were filled out but just not showing up on our account. This was hard to believe as upon asking the afternoon staff how the children slept, no one could tell us. More than once we were told, “I’m not sure how long he slept for today but he usually takes good naps.” That’s great to hear but it’s the days when he doesn’t sleep well that we need to know about! After another couple times of being informed by the PM shift that they were not able to log into the system to check on how the day went we stopped asking. For them to not be able to fill out the forms or even trust their employees with login information really caused us great concern about the staffing at the center.
The final straw for us revolved around a pair of seemingly unrelated incidents. We were informed that our youngest was to be moved into a new room with a new teacher the following Monday. We were informed of this on a Thursday night by the center’s director…via email. No one even thought to tell us in-person when we picked our children up from the center. There was no plan for a transition period presented to us or anything similar so we took it upon ourselves to seek out the director the following morning. As they knew our children well by this time (they had been there approximately 3 months) they were all well versed in our youngest child’s propensity to have issues with sudden change so just dropping him into a new class (new teacher, students, etc.) would not go well. We were told a new teacher had been hired and that the director would be heading the new class until the new teacher was able to start. The next day (Saturday afternoon to be specific) we received a vague email stating that the current director had been terminated and that the search to find a new one had been initiated. Nothing regarding a plan in terms of how the new classroom would be handled or any additional information or communication with parents directly affected. We expected to get an additional communication regarding how the new classroom would be handled since the director would not be there on Monday to lead the class but again there was no communication from the corporate level. It was next to impossible to even get these individuals to answer an email let alone have them call us since there was no way for us to call them.
We were also told that there would be a presence by someone on the corporate level there regularly following the dismissal but we never once saw anyone and no one sought us out. Given our history regarding our communication, we thought someone would have been there for morning drop-off or the evening pick-up to talk to us or at least say hi. Yet another unfulfilled promise. Being that this center had only been open a few months, we thought the owners would want to be on-site to make sure things went smoothly yet we never saw anyone and our concerns were dismissed by being told the new director would make everything better.
During this time, we noticed a distinct bite mark on our youngest son’s upper arm one evening. We had received no indication or incident report from the school. We immediately took a picture of the injury and emailed it to his teacher as well as to the individual we had been trying to contact to discuss the plans for the directorship and our son’s new classroom (which had been put on hold). The teacher stated that she’d not seen or heard about the incident and was profusely apologetic. (It is our feeling that this was directly related to critical under-staffing at Little Minds Learning Center. We’d seen other issues like cuts, scrapes, band aids or small scratches that came home without reports on them but this was the most egregious.) Eventually (2 weeks after our first request to talk via phone), my wife received a call from the director of Human Resources; however, the owner who was conferenced into the call (unbeknownst to my wife) quickly took over the call. He was quite unpleasant and very dismissive of all of our questions or concerns. He was also very demanding regarding examples of the issues we’d encountered and when my wife, who was thrown off by his level of discourteousness, couldn’t immediately produce these examples, dismissed her by stating (paraphrasing) “We sometimes imagine things that are not there.” We had pictures and bruises to prove this biting injury happened so, at his request, we put together a thorough email detailing the issues we had experienced so that they were fully informed. The email also presented him with our two-week notice that our children would no longer be attending this center. His response to our email was to immediately dis-enroll our children.
To re-state that bluntly, the response to the issues we had was to kick our children out of the center. He asked for our input and once he saw what we had to say, he kicked them out.
Neither of our children had ever had anything but great things said about them by their teachers and neither had any incident reports stating that they’d done anything yet they were dismissed.
Even after our last day, we still had issues as money was taken from our account for the following week’s tuition and it took moderation from the Better Business Bureau to get the money back.
If you chose to use this center, good luck. My wish is that you never have to deal with the issues that we had to and that you never have reason to deal with the owners.
I wish i could give this company zero stars. If you are reading this to either bring your child or take a position with this company PLEASE DO NOT!! I was an employee from august 2014 to june 2015. I started out at the onalaska location and everything was great there. I was then asked to be a lead teacher at the holmen location.
This is why i am no longer with them: i put in my 2 weeks notice because i was offered a position at another childcare with much better benefits. ( specifically employee discount on childcare, little minds only offers 10%). The following day the majorly annoying director decided to write up her own notes to my class families about me leaving. This upset me extremely so i told her i was upset and she had no place doing so because it should be my job to talk to my parents. She then ran to her office to call management and they called me in 10 minutes later to fire me instead.
This is what the center claims they offer but dont:
Live feed cameras in every classroom- there are only some in a couple classrooms. One classroom has been open for 2 months now and still doesnt have a camera. (Parents are NOT happy)
Yoga- absolutely does not happen there
Spanish- nope
Sign language- they had someone coming in the beginning but its been months now
Secure access- theres a code to open the door but they have never changed it like they say they do and alot of days other doors to get in the building are left unlocked.
Healthy meals- this is what bothers me as a parent. Since the director brought in her own mother to do the cooking the menu has never been followed, there is never enough food (the kids are ALWAYS asking for more, sometimes there is no meat included in lunch (if you pay almost $200 a week in daycare they should getting fed properly), one day breakfast consisted of a tiny peice of banana bread and milk. ( i doubt banana bread would be considered both fruit and bread in one), although cereal is only on the menu once every 2 weeks it actually gets served about 2-3 times a week
There are barely any toys or activities!! Each room has no more than 5 buckets of toys. One room only has 2 buckets of toys. There is only 1 stroller that fits 4 kids but there are usually 8 in a class so they arent able to go outside most of the time. This center is basically empty and the owners dont care enough to get more stuff.
About the director Tiffany- she never shuts up, repeats herself over and over again and has absolutely no clue how to run a daycare. She has horrible people skills and none of the staff or parents like her much. I was told by a parent that they see her as lazy. She has done nothing to improve the center at all. She is now making up excuses to reduce hours of staff that have been there for a long time just to give her friends more hours.
About the teachers- nothing bad to say about them. The teachers are great and its unfortunate that they have to deal with such a horrible company.
About the upper management- where do i start? Todd is the worst. He likes to fire employees when they give their 2 week notices. And he also will disenroll your children if you bring your concerns to him. He doesnt care about anybody but himself. He started this business based around families but has no problem kicking them out when they have legitimate concerns. He is the most unprofessional person i have ever met. The most recent family to get kicked out even said he had the nerve to charge them even after he kicked them out. Naoko is todds little lapdog. She walks around doing his bidding all while she thinks she is better than everyone else. Devin is a major tool and has no business working for a childcare center let alone being a part owner.
It also took 3 months after offering me the lead teacher position before they gave me a pay increase. There have also been times when employees checks have bounced. Not to mention that they have had to wire money to the energy company so they wouldnt shut off the electricity.
Please do not trust this company!!!!! I cannot say it enough. They are very shady.