Canterbury School in Atlanta

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  Yesica Tamariz

  :: 10 May 2016 16:01:17

  I’d like to share my experience with Canterbury School given that is hard to find helpful reviews about this daycare. My daughter started going to Canterbury School when she was 10 weeks old, and stayed there until she was almost 5 months, so I can only speak to the young infants classroom: 1) My husband and I work, so we rely on the school to be punctual so we can get to work on time. The day care is open 730a-6p but unfortunately routinely the young infant room wasn't open until 745a or later and only one teacher might be present to receive children for all classes. In my experience it was usually the toddler teacher that was always on time. So your immobile little one may be in the same room as the older kids until the remaining staff arrives. Not sure how two small babies are handled since the older rooms aren't very prepared (floor covering, cribs, etc.) and a teacher can only hold one child at a time. 2) The staffing model is based on full-time classroom teachers and “floating” assistants. For the young infant room, there is one full-time teacher who is there most of the time from 730-to sometime in the afternoon (330 or 4 maybe?), but then other assistants (floaters) will be working in different classrooms depending on the needs. This sounds like a good idea, but it seems like what can happen is that the full timer often times ends up taking care of all of the young infants, which means a ratio of 1:6 teachers to babies in the worst case scenario. This meets state minimum requirements but I know other daycares have a guaranteed 1:3 or 1:4 model vs floating. 3) The other disadvantage of having a floater staffing model is that the application of care is very inconsistent. So for example, in the morning my husband would talk to the full-time teacher and let her know that my daughter needed to wear her bib for the whole day to avoid getting a rash on her neck, but when I picked her up, the floater wouldn’t know about it. This is an example of one of multiple situations that happened because of the apparent lack of communication between the teachers and assistants. Not a deal-breaker. Just mentioning it so that you're aware. 4) The deciding factor for us to pull our daughter out of this daycare was the fact that she came back home with 2 scratches on her body in one week (I uploaded actual photos but I don't know if you will be able to see them). One of them was a scrape (it scabbed over) and the other one was more superficial. To add to that, see the note I got from school the day my daughter came back with the scratches saying my daughter cried really hard that day. When I brought this to the attention of the full-time teacher, she said “I will ask around and let you know” (which we understood to mean she would ask the floaters). But unfortunately we never got any further explanation. So after not hearing back, I spoke to the owner and her first reaction to this comment was “send me a picture of the scratch. My guess is that one of the teachers could have forgotten to remove her jewelry.” At that moment, I felt like she was invested in investigating what happened, and attentive. Unfortunately, this attitude quickly changed the next day as she approached me in the hallway while I was going in to pick my daughter up and she said “the teachers are saying this happened at home. I fully trust them. I’m concerned to hear that you’re so concerned about this. Children get bruises and scratches from playing and this will continue to happen as they grow older”… when I asked about what her policies were about long nails and jewelry her answer was “we don’t have policies.” All of that to say that this situation was handled poorly not only at the classroom level (see the note from the full-time teacher attached), but also at the school level. We really wanted to like this place, but for the reasons stated above, this didn't work for us. Some of the people there like Ms. Esther or Ms. Marine were outstanding, but two people can't make the entire experience what it needs to be.

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  Ricardo Sullivan

  :: 02 September 2015 15:18:25

  I highly recommend Canterbury School

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  Corey Knight

  :: 12 March 2015 15:52:00

  Two Thumbs Up!

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  Rick Benson

  :: 06 February 2015 11:15:13

  Highly recommended!

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  Alyecia Newtin

  :: 26 August 2014 08:56:36

  I love working here