The Learning Experience - Reunion

I worked with the company and became increasingly frustrated with the way that the daycare was being run and the owners. I had wanted to put my daughter in daycare and decided based on the tour decided that this place fit what I was looking for. The only thing was, they had not opened up yet. When the did open up, my daughter began to attend. I ended up in between jobs and found out that they were looking for a cook, so I interviewed and got the job. The agreement when I started was that I was to work 8-3 Mon- Fri. Because my son has a 4 day school week, the agreement was that if my husband was unable to get Monday's off, that my son would be able to attend the PreSchool 1 class only on Mondays at no charge. It was also brought up that as an employee, starting around the beginning of 2020, I would be eligible for a 50% discount, but until then I would still be paying full tuition for my daughter. The first time I needed child care for my son was a snow day. They called me as I was headed into work with the kids saying that they were not licensed for a 5 year old in the classroom. This was the first agreement that they changed their minds on. Side note: they have since registered and have a 5 year old attending in that class room. I now didn't have child care for my son, or the extra income to pay for child care for him since that was never part of the agreement. I tried talked to the owners about this, but they didn't want to help me out in anyway and put all the blame on others. I also found out during these conversations that I was going to have to add to my hours in order to get the discount for my daughter. That had never been part of the plan when I was hired either. As I became more financially strapped due to missing days because I didn't have care yet set up for my son, I talked to the owners and put in my notice. I gave them almost a months notice making my last day around my 90 day mark. I was required to also give a 2 week notice for my daughter as well and so her last day was to also be my last day. In the months time, I became increasingly frustrated with the running of the daycare. When I started my daughter here, the lead teacher in her room told us that they were going to implement a potty training system for the kids who were ready. She didn't remain with the daycare for long. My daughter began showing signs of being ready and I had multiple conversations with the teachers. The daycare is severely understaffed and my daughters class does not have a consistent lead teacher, so they were unable to be consistent in her potty training, causing her to severely regress. When I brought this up to the teachers, I received extreme attitude and when I brought it up to the owners, they dismissed it and told me to wait until she was 2.5 years old. While working in the kitchen, I noticed that food was disappearing and getting opened without proper labeling. I brought this up to the owners 4 times. Each time I was brushed off that it wasn't that important and it was no big deal. 2 times I came across a situation where the food that was scheduled to be dispersed to the students was not able to because the food had decreased to the point that there was not enough of that item. I found out that the owner was going into the kitchen and taking whatever she wanted to eat and opening the food without correct labeling. This left conditions unsafe, as well as the food short for the kids. I continued to shorten the dates that I wanted to end on, but because of the 2 week notice required for my daughter, I was stuck. Last week I was asked to shovel over 2 feet of snow off of the playground. I did this 2 days, and then called in sick the next day due to stomach pains. I thought it was sickness at first, but when I never got sick and the pains continued only when I would stand up, I started to think, and mentioned to one of the owners that I thought it might be pulled muscles instead. They then asked me to go out and shovel again. I moved some snow around, but didn't do much as it hurt my stomach. Then this week again they asked me to move the snow and I tried to tell the owner that I couldn't shovel due to what I believed to be pulled muscles from last time. She was less than pleased to hear this and had angry responses. She also lied to me saying that others had gone out as well to shovel, when no one had. This was a direct lie that I caught her in, which I know there were more. I also have all of this recorded due to the past experiences of the owners telling me one thing and then changing their minds. The teachers in my daughters room also became hostile when I again confronted them about the potty training. I made today my last day as I no longer felt comfortable in the school for myself, my daughter or the fact that the daycare is so understaffed and the staff they have are unqualified for the positions they are in and are poorly trained with little to no experience in actual child care. The center does not have a director and has not for months. The promises made to me in the beginning were not enforced, both with the care of my child and the care plan for my son. I tried talking to the owner about this and that I feel it is unfair that I have to pay for next week in tuition when I would obviously not be bringing my daughter back to a place that I didn't feel was safe while I was there, let alone when I am not there. And, I missed at least 5 days of work, no pay, for having to stay home with my son when he was supposed to be able to go to pre school 1 there. I continued to work for them because I wanted them to succeed, I put in a long notice because I didn't want to cut the ties in a bad way because you never know what the future holds and if they got themselves turned around and successful, the location cant be beat if I needed child care again. It became clear to me that my hopes were not the way things were going to go, but I was unable to leave my daughter there without me, and because I was going to still have to be paying for her, I needed to keep working to pay for what I could of her tuition.