Heritage Child Care Center

Pretty good daycare. Most staff are good and do a good job preparing your kids for kindergarten. Very good community of parents and kids. But be warned: the director (Krissie) plays favorites. The waiting list is meaningless: if she likes you, you're in quickly; if she doesn't, the waiting list is really long. And there are no guarantees once you're in that you'll stay in: she WILL expel even a one-year-old child (!) for entirely normal behaviors (like biting or hitting) without first using best practices in childcare, like trying to actually identify the triggers to the behavior. When you meet with her, she talks in formal, lawyer-like language that gives just the barest information and no empathy. She expelled our 23-month old for biting - and then our girl STOPPED biting a week after leaving, which suggests something at Heritage was triggering the behavior. Krissie informed us of our one-year-old's explosion by email - then never responded to any of our questions since!

I was extremely happy with HeritageCare when Ms. Terri was the director. It ran smoothly and I never had any issues with them at all. However, for some reason they let Ms. Terri go and hired a new director. Ever since then, it's been a downhill journey. In her first week, she decided to have the infant room painted...during a weekday when the children were present. The infants had to stay out in the toddler room, and nap in highchairs. This past Monday I received a call in the morning saying they were sorry, but painting that was supposed to be done to the other rooms over the weekend was not finished, and they would not be able to be open today. I had to stay home from work with my child. That is so unacceptible. The director should have been there over the weekend supervising the work, or at least checking in on Sunday to make sure all was ready - not just let the teachers come in on Monday morning to the mess. I don't feel like she devotes enough time to managing the daycare. There are many other issues that have happened since the new director took charge., but alas I won't list them all. It's a shame, because the teachers are all really great, but I definitely would not recommend this place to anyone while this director is in charge. I am currently trying to get my child into a new daycare, and I know quite a few other parents are trying to also.

My dear child (DC) was enrolled at this center and the experience was far from pleasant. Here are my observations:



--I noticed that when the afternoon provider was frequently absent, my DC was feed all of her bottles. When the afternoon provide was there, DC only drank two of the four bottles.



-- When I picked DC up one day, they had fed DC only two ounces of milk the entire day! DC was fed breakfast cereal around 8 am (with no milk) and 1.5 jars of baby food at 1:30 with the two ounces of milk. One caregiver said DC played throughout the day and the other said DC slept throughout the day.



--The caregivers openly speak negatively about about the parents and frequently make snide comments.



--DC was scheduled to receive physical therapy services from the county Infant and Toddlers program, the therapist and I were told by the afternoon provider "Why does this have to happen here" and "We had no prior notice of this." I had faxed the appointment slip to the director, spoke with her on the phone to get the fax number, and informed the caregivers on multiple occasions that the appointment would take place. I had also shared the evaluations from a private therapist with the caregivers. When they found out the therapist was not the private therapist but from the county program, they offered to sit in on the appointment for 15 minutes.



The one good thing about the center is that is seems to be clean but I would caution against sending your child to this center until the have a significant change in staff, center policy and management.