IGrow Montessori

New director Andrea Hill is horrible!! Ever since the new director joined is when we started having all the issues. First, Andrea never smiles or acknowledges parents as they walk in. She’s always sitting in her office working on her computer. She met with my husband 6 months after my son was enrolled to inform us that my son had instances where he pushed another kid or threw something on the floor. She clarified that this kind of behavior only occurs after the assigned main teacher leaves for the day where he has to be placed in another class with another teacher and possibly a whole new group of kids. She further informed my husband that the teachers in the “afternoon class” don’t look forward to having my kid in their class. It was very disturbing to know this statement came from a director. Apparently, Andrea has a lot of work to do to get better at her professional skills (even though I doubt she has any). She further stated that this behavior has been occurring for a while and it’s a failure on their part that they didn’t inform us sooner to interfere as parents. Apparently there is a breakdown in communication on her end and she is lacking follow up skills. Andrea also informed my husband that if there is 1 more incident she will expel him!! As parents since we were informed that our son does well while his assigned daily teacher is there, we went the extra mile and changed our working hours so we can pick him up early around the same time that his primary teacher leaves. This means he won’t have to spend time at the new class so the afternoon teachers “won’t have to deal with his behavior”, which I find very pathetic. A few weeks passed by with no issues and one day the main teacher was not in his classroom filling in for another teacher. My husband asked the director to take my son to where the other teach is since he is comfortable with her, her response was "He needs to adapt to any teacher". Great response from a director who is supposed to ensure the children are comfortable. Then later in the day my son threw a tray which caused Andrea to call us to pick up my son for the day and stated that she will make a decision that same day on whether he should stay or not (so she didn’t even stick to her earlier promise- to have my son stay at home for 2 weeks and then to return for re-evaluation). She just decided to end everything that same day. This shows how much she was unwilling to help resolve the issue. We did everything we can on our end to help with the situation but in return all Andrea did was call us anytime my son pushes or hits another kid and asks us to pick him up from the daycare. None of my son’s actions caused a main damage, such as a bruise, or causing a kid to bleed, it was just a normal hitting action by a 3 year old! It was apparent that the incidents were very minor and just a normal behavior by a 3 year old, but Andrea just wanted to find an excuse to expel my son. She was unwilling to do anything to fix the issue. The incident reports that were written on my son all had the following comment – unable to control. I understand that there are rules and regulations at the daycare where the director has to write an incident report, but simply hitting a kid on the hand or pushing another kid where no injury results doesn’t require her to keep calling parents during working hours to talk about this little incidents instead of doing something on her part to manage them. We addressed our concerns with a couple of the owners. They listed carefully and took our feed into consideration and agreed with a lot of the comments we had regarding Andrea’s awful way of handling the situation. We also informed both owners that Andrea owes us an apology for telling us that the afternoon teachers don’t like having my son in their class. In return Andrea never apologizes and just makes the decision to expel my son, which is a normal behavior from an arrogant person. Apparently the owners don’t have a say in this area and this kind of decision is handled by the director only. While my son got expelled as Andrea requested, this bad review on her will remain for other parents to read. I hope that one day she’ll understand the difference between a minor incident and a major incident instead of calling parents all the time for every little issue that comes up. The owner also stated that this new director is not a "Caring" person but is someone who is here to manage classrooms and regulation. This is a school where parents expect their children to receive love and care so not sure how you would keep a director in charge who doesn't care!!