Sandy Lane Nursery School - Belleville NJ Regular Child Care Center

This is a long review because I want parents to know about what we encounter with this school. The following are my experience with Sandy Lane for the past 8 months in the infant room. As a parent, you can decide if this place is suitable for you after reading. I have recommended my fellow mum friends to never consider Sandy Lane unless no other options. When I was looking for infant care, all other places have a waitlist while Sandy Lane has an opening so with no other choice, we had to put our child in Sandy Lane. We were only provided a glance of the classroom due to COVID restrictions but didn’t think this would be the worst decision we’ve made, providing torture to us mentally for 8 months. I have pictures, screenshots etc & am more than happy to share. If you think this might be a one-off & might not happen to you, think again & consider if you want to take this risk, because we never thought this would happen to us too. 1. No updates, no feedback, no interactions on how your child is doing Having to put my child in infant care at 7 months old is heartbreaking but due to work, we have no choice. We were expecting updates from her caregivers on how she is adapting or coping (at least for the 1st couple of weeks as it is a huge change for her), but no updates, no pictures, basically zero communications on how she is. Not even at pick up or drop off. Just a piece of paper (cuddlegram) in her bag at the end of the day stating time she napped, eat & diaper change. There is a section for additional notes, but throughout the 8 months, that section is blank. When we ask for an update, it was a 1 sentence response. When we raised our concerns to the director, Angela, she said they do not provide daily updates but there is an end of year or quarterly check in with parents on developmental milestones etc, but until now, nothing was done with us. If you are a parent who wouldn’t want to miss your child’s 1st milestones & would want to know occasionally how your child is doing (like me), this is not the place for you. We had our other child in a smaller daycare when he was 2 years old before we moved, & they provide updates on our child, send photos, speak to us at drop off & pick up on how he is adapting & doing. 2. Most of the staff & caregivers I came across are unfriendly, rude & discriminating (except for a few like Nicole, Samantha & Nathalie) The infant head teacher, Dawn & a couple of the caregivers in infant room are simply not the friendliest. We always get condescending, or one word/sentence response from Dawn. Her messages & her tone of voice when she speaks to us sounds like we, the parents are fools & always in the wrong. I’ve tried to be nice & uses ‘please, I appreciate etc’ because I really do, but the responses I get from her are always coming across as plain condescending & snubbish. There are 1 or 2 caregivers in the infant room who are nicer. I’ve heard other parents saying Dawn is nice etc, but I didn’t get this treatment, not sure if it’s because I’m being discriminated against as I’m a minority. About 2 months prior to the end of the school year, Angela (School Director) asked if we are continuing Kelsey as we didn’t enroll her for the new school year (yes you need to re-enroll your child for summer & then for the new school year in September & pay additional enrollment fees (not mentioned to us when we did the tour or initial enrollment). I said no & she was like “you need to give us 1 month notice” which I was going to in 2 weeks as it’s not even 1 month prior. She said I need to give now so they can use the deposit for her last month of tuition, so I dropped her an email & gave my 1 month notice. We received no response on that. On the very last week of the school year, my husband received a call from MaryAnn (business manager) saying that we owe them half a month’s tuition as our deposit was only half a month. My husband said he doesn’t remember if we did 1 month or half a month deposit & we will check & if we do owe money, we will send in a cheque. That very day when I went to pick up my child, MaryAnn was waiting at the door, handed me a paper & said “Your husband INSISTED you paid a full month but we have records etc that you only paid half a month & you now owe us money”. She was so rude! I told her we were going to check & will pay if we do owe, we just don’t remember. Then when we were leaving the school, Elaine, the owner came chasing after me saying that we did not make payment & they have records etc. & I told her, we were going to check & will make payment, we just wanted to check & confirm. Like seriously, Elaine has never make any effort to make a conversation with us when she sees us but now she is chasing after us because of money?! I was infuriated & called my husband immediately & he confirmed that he just told her nicely that he doesn’t remember & will check our bank records & make the remaining payment. He didn’t insists we did 1 month deposit, so MaryAnn was just putting words into his mouth! Guess what, the next day when I was dropping my child off, the first thing that Dawn asked me even before taking my child was ‘Did you make payment?’ I will leave it to you to decide if this is something you really want to go through. Being treated like we are poor & do not want to make payment. If we do owe money, they should have responded to our email sent 1.5 months ago & not be like asking for this money on the last week. Do also note that they move around their staff a lot depending on which classroom needs them. The caregiver that my daughter is comfortable with gets moved to another class & someone that is supposed to be in a big kid class gets moved to take care of the babies in infant class. There are a few consistent caregivers but a lot of times, I see caregivers that are not meant for the infant classroom at the end of the day. 3. Staff do not communicate to each other Told someone about her last bottle feed, wrote a note on things to take note for the day but none was not communicated to the other caregivers in the group. Told Angela my child needs to attend therapy sessions but it was not communicated to her caregivers. 4. False reporting on cuddlegram Trust is extremely important with your child’s caregiver & especially when you get no updates on how your child is doing & the only thing that they do is give you a cuddlegram on their naps, feeding & diaper change, you would want this to be accurate but no, cuddlegrams states she has a nap at 1220 but has a feed at 1230 & a diaper change & feeding at the same time?! Cuddlegram states she has 3 bottle feed but we came home with an extra full bottle. Timings are pre-filled because we have a timing that was indicated after we picked her up. So now, our only source of update on our child is also false & untrue. 5. 1 nap (at the same 12pm to 2pm timing every day) for 8 month old I was told they run on the child’s individual schedule. I’ve provided estimated timing on when my child needs her 2 naps as I use awake times instead of scheduled naps, & unfortunately, my child always only had her nap from 12pm to 2pm. When I asked nicely, I was once again being replied in a condescending way by Dawn that it’s because my child doesn’t want to nap when they tried & she is just interesting in everything around her. For the 8 months we are there, her naps are always between the timing of 12pm to 2pm & that is because the whole school turns off the light, plays lullaby at this same time everyday. To me, this is them trying to force all the children to nap at this same time & not following their individual nap needs/schedules. I’ve even overheard another parent saying the caregiver told them the same thing about their child who is 6 months old & having only 1 nap. 6. Illogical ‘rules’/’reasons’ Child cannot be dropped off later than 10am. If our child has medical appointments in the morning ending after 10am, we cannot send her in. This was not mentioned to us during the tour when we asked the director, Angela about drop off time as she needs to go on a couple of therapy. On a couple of occasions when we told them she will be late, we get very rude messages like “Moving forward, we cannot accept children after 10am. When we asked why, the reason was dropping her late will be disruptive to others. When we asked how it will be disruptive, they gave an unconvincing answer of “she will miss activities”. But we were told the infant room runs on the individual child schedule (i.e. when they need to nap etc) so this does not make any sense. Does that mean that if an activity is planned & the child is due for a nap or feeding, they will skip that & let them do the activity? I totally agree if it was for a 2 year old where their day has activities planned, it will be slightly disruptive but for an infant room were every infant has their own schedules? They are also always saying ‘this is our policy’ to response to anything & everything 7. ‘Fever’ Episodes My child was sent back home multiple times in a month due to ‘fever’ of 100.2, each time she is sent back, she cannot go back the next day as it needs to be 24 hour fever free. & each time she is sent back, she was not running a fever (their thermometer & our thermometer are off by 2 degrees). She was not acting fussy etc & was perfectly okay when we bring her home. When we asked if she was fussy etc in school, Dawn said she was eating well, not fussy & behaving all normal. So how is this a child who is running a fever? On the very last episode, we sent her in after exactly 24 hours the next day at 12pm & Dawn & the caregivers in the infant room gave me a ‘you are a b****’ face. It’s so disruptive to me as I am working & having to pay for infant care but yet she kepts getting sent back home suddenly when she is not truly having a fever. Another parent in the school with an older child has the same experience as me, her child also kept getting sent back for fever when he is perfectly fine. 8. No incident reports Caregiver called to say my child’s eye was swollen due to crying but when we picked her up, her eyes was not puffy from crying but was swollen because of a scratch under her eye. This was proceeded by an eye infection right after. Our guess is probably someone scratched her. On another occasion in May, caregiver called at 4pm to tell me some other baby scratched my child’s eyelids while she was on tummy time. Thinking it is a minor scratch since they are baby, but when I picked her up, the scratch was more like a deep gush with a bloody scrape which I don’t think a baby nail could cause it. Our guess is she probably fell while no one was looking or an adult scratched her. Per their policy, this should be reported as an incident but we didn’t receive any incident report thereafter. 9. Always in need of money They are constantly having a fundraiser. They have a Procare app but they do not provide children updates on that app, the only messages you get from there is for fundraising, reminders that school will be closed. It’s really more for their own announcements & not for parents update. My child is still crying at drop off after 8 months, even when she sees Dawn who is there everyday & the head infant teacher. As a mum, my instincts are that something must be wrong for a child to cry so badly at drop off after 8 months. Almost every other childcare in the area has a long waiting list but per my knowledge, as of now, Sandy Lane does not, so it does reflects the popularity of this school.