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My 14 month old daughter is going to start going to daycare next month, I visit several daycare centers but end up between lightbridge in Rutherford or Bright horozions in lyndhurst. I really like both places, but can't decide which one will be my best option... Please, any suggestions???
Our Lightbridge isn't in Rutherford, but I assume the chain does the same thing everywhere. We had just seen better teachers at other daycares, these were young, just out of college with not a lot of experience and a lot of turnover every few years. We're of the opinion that the costs weren't going to the teachers but the administrators and chain owners and that we wouldn't get our money's worth.
I'm sure they're a lot stricter about who they hire and how much they watch over them these days, but it was something that you don't want to find out about from any day care. Best of luck.
You are lucky to have a choice between Lightbridge and Bright Horizons. I would go with Bright Horizons just because this by now is a huge day care provider. They also support back up care for a number of major corporations so they are not likely to do something weird and are probably very standardized in all their centers. They might be a bit too careful but honestly you want that for such a small kid. My son spent one summer in their camp like program in Fishkill NY and we were happy for the most part.
Thank you so much for the reply! Do you know any preschool in the area that you would like to recommend?
Unfortunately not, we're a lot further south along the Garden State these days and when we lived in the area we were over in Belleville and sent our kid to the Education Station in Bloomfield, which is a pretty fair distance for you to go every day for day care.
But they were really wonderful as well if you wanted to make that 30+ minute drive with traffic.
Does that BH have the camera feed? That's a good way to check in the first few weeks when your daughter is transitioning. My son went to a different BH for a while and several coworkers use BH now (in Jersey City and NYC, obscenely expensive, but they are very happy) and here are what we observed among our 3 locations.
Pros:
- Classes are consistently run below max size, so more teacher to go around than in other schools. Not sure if this is intentional in all schools or just because the ones we used were so expensive they couldn't keep the school filled.
- Teacher turnover low to none, but student turnover was higher than I'd like. They actively move the child up to the next "grade" on the child's age, even if it is during the school year vs moving the whole class up at a time. So we see new faces and lose familiar faces often.
- Daily activity/progress reports, often with photos.
- Reasonable sick return policy. I think just 24 hours fever free and you can return. Unlike my son's school now, which requires a doctor's note for EVERYTHING. I can't tell you how many days I took off to take him to the dr's just to pay for the stupid note.
- Kids are happy to go to school
Cons:
- I personally found that they are a stickler for rules and have lots of liability clauses for things they won't do. Which can be great for the average kid because care is standardized but my kid had feeding issues and they cited their liability clauses for pretty much everything I asked them to try. My kid ended up in the hospital for dehydration because he just wasn't getting enough formula throughout the day (like 0 to 1 oz over 10 hours?). Again, I'm not blaming them, but just understand that they don't seem to be very flexible if your child ends up needing more specialized care.
Does that BH have the camera feed? That's a good way to check in the first few weeks when your daughter is transitioning. My son went to a different BH for a while and several coworkers use BH now (in Jersey City and NYC, obscenely expensive, but they are very happy) and here are what we observed among our 3 locations.
Pros:
- Classes are consistently run below max size, so more teacher to go around than in other schools. Not sure if this is intentional in all schools or just because the ones we used were so expensive they couldn't keep the school filled.
- Teacher turnover low to none, but student turnover was higher than I'd like. They actively move the child up to the next "grade" on the child's age, even if it is during the school year vs moving the whole class up at a time. So we see new faces and lose familiar faces often.
- Daily activity/progress reports, often with photos.
- Reasonable sick return policy. I think just 24 hours fever free and you can return. Unlike my son's school now, which requires a doctor's note for EVERYTHING. I can't tell you how many days I took off to take him to the dr's just to pay for the stupid note.
- Kids are happy to go to school
Cons:
- I personally found that they are a stickler for rules and have lots of liability clauses for things they won't do. Which can be great for the average kid because care is standardized but my kid had feeding issues and they cited their liability clauses for pretty much everything I asked them to try. My kid ended up in the hospital for dehydration because he just wasn't getting enough formula throughout the day (like 0 to 1 oz over 10 hours?). Again, I'm not blaming them, but just understand that they don't seem to be very flexible if your child ends up needing more specialized care.
Thank you so much for this detailed information. And no this center does not have the camera feed, that was one of the reasons I was leaning towards Lightbridge because they do have the cameras... Do you think all BH have the same policy?
I think camera feeds aren't as useful as the sales brochure makes them out to be. Do you really have time during your workday to look at a webcam feed of the classroom? Even if it's just on in the corner how useful is it going to be when it covers the entire classroom and you need to scrutinize the shot to see which one's your kid?
I want to trust my daycare provider in the first place so I don't have to watch them all day and check up on them. Do you put out a nannycam when you get a babysitter or just hire the right sitter? The camera feeds didn't help prevent baby fight club, it was their cell phone videos that got them in trouble.
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