Discovery Village

It's so difficult find a high quality daycare in this day and age, especially now with COVID-19. Discovery Village - Tarrytown, NY Day Care Center is dedicated to meeting and exceeding your child's needs - both academic and social-emotional, putting you at ease.

I was so excited to start our son at Discovery Village and so disappointed in the way things turned out. Prior to my son beginning, I called the center to ask about COVID-19 policies and updates. I was assured that someone would be at the front desk at all times checking temperatures, foot coverings would be provided and each child would be required to bring “classroom shoes” to prevent cross contamination.

During the week our child attended Discovery Village, I saw no one in foot coverings, my child was never changed into his “classroom shoes” and saw no one checking temperatures. The only COVID prevention measures I saw were masks.

Discovery Village requires families to download and use an app that acts as a key to the door, as well as provides families with a snapshot of their child’s day. We were told we would receive daily pictures and updates (throughout the day). Each day we were provided with wrong information - on most days there was a note saying my child ate “most of what was served,” when in fact he had never eaten a meal there. One day there was another note about my child’s naptime (he had never napped there either). All of the information would come flooded into us at the very end of the day and none of it was differentiated to my son - all generic phrases used for every child (confirmed to us by a staff member).

Over the course of the week we noticed major safety issues - no one was ever at the front desk during the day, which raises both security and safety concerns. Anyone with this app has access to the facility and on most days, I walked in and out with anyone even noticing or acknowledging my presence. One morning my husband dropped our son off and no one asked him who he was or introduced themselves to him. On the Friday of that week, I came to pick up our son and there were children engaging in water play DIRECTLY next to the parking lot in a wide open area, rather than in the enclosed playground nearby and the staff members present were too far away from some of the children to prevent a serious accident from happening. We immediately decided to pull our son from the program.

After emailing the owner and director with our concerns, I did receive a phone call, and was able to express our feelings with Shira (the owner) on the phone who was very defensive about what I had witnessed but expressed to me that she would ‘correct what she could’. When I went to pick up my son's belongings the following Monday, nothing had been corrected. Once again, no one was at the front desk (even though both the owner and the director were in the building), and I saw several parents walking in and out of the building without their temperatures being checked or utilizing the foot coverings provided by the center. No one acknowledged me or even gave my son's teachers a heads up that he would no longer be attending the program and that I would be coming to pick up his belongings - I had to explain it to them when I arrived!! SO UNPROFESSIONAL.

We have many friends with young infants in the area who would have followed us in our decision to enroll their children at this program, but will no longer do so now. The facility is modern and the teacher's seem nice, but I believe the owner and director will just tell families what they want to hear to fulfill spaces.