On Tuesday morning, I woke up at 3:30AM to fed Baby A. She'd had a bottle a couple hours earlier (Jeff gave it to her). Guess she isn't ready to sleep through the night. I fell asleep with her in my arms up on my shoulder. I put her back in her crib around 5:35AM. She then got up again around 6AM (Jeff took care of her). When I woke up around 7:15AM, I found Jeff holding Baby A on one side and Henry looking lovingly at Baby A on the other. The three of them were very cute together.
Miss R was a snoozy bear and didn't get up until after 8AM...with some prodding from Jeff. After breakfast, the toddlers took a shower. Miss R is doing much better getting her hair wet willingly, so that was great.
Jeff went with me to the daycare. The dropoff with the kids was fine. One of the teachers from Baby A's room said something about the CPS driver taking the wrong car seat (which is admittedly idiotic). But I pointed out that it was disturbing that the front desk personnel were so disorganized that they let people walk off with other people's property.
We met with the director. Jeff told her our concerns. She was not apologetic. She said, "We didn't know." I said, "You are never supposed to reveal private information to anyone but the foster parents." She just said, "Our policy is to send reports home." Idiot. She said that they never give private information over the phone. But the [fill-in-the-blanks] are willing to send along private information on CPS visits. Jeff is going to call their corporate office. He thinks that the director is just kind of clueless. It took us several weeks to figure out that she was the new director when the old one left. She conveys no sense of leadership, that's for sure.
At this point, even if CPS says that bio mom probably isn't a safety issue, I'm so irked at the daycare's lack of organization and unwillingness to accept responsiblity (how about an apology?) that we very well may find other accommodations.
We began our search today by stopping by one of the places that we had visited in our initial daycare search. The advantage of this particular daycare is that they are a feeder daycare into one of the top charter schools in the state. There are a couple disadvantages: (a) the facility isn't quite as nice as Children's Learning Adventure, and (b) Miss R really likes her teacher Miss Diana. One of the reasons why we discounted the daycare last year was because the play yard was...sad. It was basically an open yard of dirt with a couple plastic slides. We were very pleased to find that since last year, they have made vast improvements with the yard. The yard is now covered with grass. They have planted several trees around the yard (a lot of citrus). And, they have a garden that currently contains many sunflowers.
There is only one class per level. Consequently, Henry and Miss R would be in the same class most of the time. This was a particular concern when it was unclear what was going to happen with Miss R. Had she left us, we thought it would have been especially devasting for Henry if he had spent all of his time with her at school and home. Now that she will be with us forever, that concern doesn't exist. I confess that in a more ideal setting, we'd still like them to be in separate classes so that they have the opportunity to develop their own identities independent of each other.
The curriculum. At CLA, they do a good job pretending like they spend a lot of time doing "curriculum development" and their promotional material claims that their curriculm utilizes research on brain development (blah, blah, blah). Given who they have currently in charge of "curriculum development" at the moment (the one who lies and can think her way out of a wet paper sack), I pretty much think that their whole "brain development" based on research is probably a load of horse poop. I suspect that the "curriculum" is no better or worse than your average daycare. They claim to teach Spanish and sign language. We have yet to hear or see either out of our kids, except that Henry definitely knows how to count in Spanish (probably has to do with his time in Miss Diana and Miss Lulu's class, who are both native Spanish speakers).
At Daisy (the new daycare we are considering), counting to 20 is on their list of things expected out of kids in the 2-3 year old room before they move to the 3 year old room. I don't think that we've ever gone past 10 with the kids, so that would be new. And Henry would have to be completely potty trained before moving to the 3 year old room. The other things on the list were things like colors and shapes, which Henry definitely knows, and Miss R somewhat knows. In addition to Spanish and sign language, Daisy also teaches the kids Turkish. Why Turkish? Because the director of the charter school and daycare is from Turkey. The local paper did a piece on the charter school a couple months ago and basically implied that the director is using the school (and others like it) as a funnel for bringing Turkish citizens into the country. I haven't researched the situation enough to take a position on it, but in terms of educational standards, it does seem like the school so far as done well in teaching math and science in the K-12 school (winning awards and whatnot). I believe that all students in the K-12 are required to take a couple years of Turkish and/or Turkish culture. Going to Daisy would secure a spot at the K-12.
We probably won't make a decision today, but we'll be thinking long and hard over the next couple days. I'm still mad, mad, mad. I've been unhappy since being lied to by the "development coordinator" when she promised that the child who attacked Henry several weeks ago would be moved and then she didn't do it for nearly two months (see April 15 post entitled "Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!"). During April and May, Henry did not want to go to school. And funny thing, since they switched the "older kids" (minus Henry) to the older classrooms, Henry hasn't complained about going to school. Sure, the boys in the class sometimes hit each other (some more than others), but he doesn't have to worry about being "attacked."
Alright. I have litter pans to wash today and papers to organize. In happy news, I have a massage scheduled for 3PM and it is very much needed!
No comments:
Post a Comment