Business ProfileforLa Petite Academy

The current director is running La Petite into the ground. For over a year we were extremely short staffed and yet she kept enrolling kids. Staff members went to her with their concerns and nothing changed. She even stated to me once after enrolling another family “I need to stop enrolling kids we have no room.” She didn’t. Besides myself, she caused 7 other employees to leave because of how she was treating not only the staff, but the kids. The staff became very overwhelmed, a few had mental breakdowns because the ratios were always off, and extremely off. There was multiple times our Jr. K room (maxes at 20) had 24 kids in the room, usually with one teacher, and a few of those times infants were also in that room (which changes the ratio) but no extra teachers, because we had none! We didn’t even have staff to give breaks most of the time. I worked through my lunch at least 4 different times. If I wouldn’t have, no one would have been able to bring kids to the door for pick ups. I was literally trying eating my lunch, at 4 PM...while walking kids down the hall to their parents for pick-up. No staff for bathroom breaks either. It was a hot mess. I was on my break once and the director was bringing a little toddler boy to the bathroom with her because she had nowhere to put him. I offered to watch him while on my break and she replied, “oh good, it’s probably illegal for me to take him with” ?????????????? She also left infants laying on the ground under the front desk multiple times. One cried for 45 minutes while the director sat in her office, 8 feet away not doing anything (I have proof). She also would have a zoo of children in her little 6x5 office space with the door closed so other parents couldn’t see. She had so many kids she couldn’t supervise them, toddlers were left unattended up by the front door. We had staff that wasn’t certified to be in a room alone with the kids. But it happened multiple times. One was in a room with a capacity of 20 kids and 10/1 ratio. She was in that room alone with 22 kids, they were all awake and not napping. Another was in the toddler room by herself, probably over ratio too. We were always over ratio somewhere. It got to the point where the director was lying to the parents when they would ask where the kids where, we have live feed cameras in the rooms. She had over 20 kids in the back hallways from infants to PreK kids, and she told the parents that asked where they were that they were outside. After we lowered in ratio, and kids could go back to their rooms, she told the toddler class they couldn’t go outside because she told parents they were already outside when they were in the hallways. That happened at least twice. Kids in the halls like that, probably a good month or two. We had a staff member test positive for COVID back in August. The director knew about the confirmed positive test by 1:00 on Friday afternoon. Families and staff didn’t find out until the following Monday AFTER everyone was back and had been there all day. I got screenshots from parents with the message being sent around 7 & 8pm, that doesn’t give anyone enough time to find care for their kids the next day. She could have let everyone know Friday and gave them the weekend to figure out childcare. She then told new employees who asked about handling COVID, that we had a positive case and shut down for two weeks, but the test was actually a false positive...which it wasn’t. Cynthia also had a conversation with me about COVID being fake and it would be over after the election...she hardly wore her mask AND NEVER washed her hands upon coming into the building. The old assistant director, who left informed me that the director continuously talked about the staff behind our backs. The staff bent over backwards for her and she treated us like crap. Lied to us all the time, she never knew any answers to questions we would have so she just made them up! She is extremely lazy and doesn’t take responsibility for any of her mistakes. If you paid extra money in the summer for “Camp Innovate” I’d question the extra charges! We didn’t get any of our supplies for the camp activities until the end of summer. Cynthia was on me to plan the summer, so I did. She did to come through on her end. Our class never got their T-shirts they worked hard for, I had to go buy supplies so we could do our planned art and play activities. I don’t know where your money went but it didn’t make it to your kids classroom. Same for private kindergarten. We were so short staffed the private kindergarten teacher was hardly in her room. She was usually at the front desk. Never had stable groups until March 2021, after licensing came in and saw what a mess it was. Used to have school agers in PreK in the am, along with Jr. K, and Kindergarten. In the PM Kindergarten would combine with PreK, then later PreK would combine into JrK. Preschool would combine with Early Preschool. Toddlers would combine into EP or Infants. Did not follow the health checks! There was multiple times employees would show up and get scanned and have a temp above 101 and they would just keep scanning until an appropriate temperature would show. The director would rather have the center at capacity for children than following any safety regulations. La Petite only cares about the money, not the children, not the staff. If they cared about the children they wouldn’t have massively over enrolled kids, to our already understaffed problem.