Sterling VA Montessori Schools (credit, day care, house)

[bdaddyo]

Does anyone have any information or personal experience with Lola's Place in Sterling/Cascades or Montessori Childrens House of Loudoun? Anyone who has your kids attending one of them or parents who have moved between the two?

Lola's Place is part of The Boyd School (not sure why they dont just call it the same thing) but I havent found any reviews on them specifically...only on other Boyd locations. Most of the reviews on Boyd are older posts, but some relatively recent, consisting of mostly bad reviews which are primarily focused on poor administration. The school looked amazing but I was ready to walk out after 5 minutes of talking to the 0-2yr teacher at the open house. After about 10 minutes, we were moved over to the 2-3yr teacher and I was very impressed with her (Ms Joan) and my attitude changed. The school has heated floors, in the summer the kids have a garden are to plant and grow vegetables, and they allow the kids to go out in the rain and snow to experience it provided they have the proper attire. All things I was impressed by. It did seem a little odd that they require the children to have remove their normal shoes and wear slippers inside the school, but not a big deal.

While I realize that the teacher of the younger group may still be a good teacher if she doesnt represent the school well during an open house, it makes me question the vetting process by the school administration.

Lola's has a very high end security system for access to the school and checking kids in and out and the system prints out a status report when you check the kids out at the end of the day. I just dont have any personal insight to the quality of those status reports but read one comment that they were very generic and not insightful.

I was nothing but impressed with MCHL but they have a waiting list. In fact I even told the admissions lady we met with that I felt like I should hug her on my way out. lol. They dont seem to offer additional programs like Piano, soccer, etc., something Lola's Place does do but then I have heard negative things about the quality of the extra programs at Lola's. I really liked the fact that MCHL's Kindergarten program is a mix of Montessori and Loudoun County curriculum to help prepare the kids for transition to a normal school program. I could not find a single bad review of them and overall found more reviews than Lola's Place had. The little bit of word of mouth has been nothing but extreme praise for MCHL and have been told that they are better than Lola's from a curriculum standpoint. I didnt have the opportunity to dig deeper there though.

MCHL brochures were very plain and simple while Lola's had extremely high quality (expensive) marketing material. While that is very nice on the front, on some level it has the opposite effect and I think that the money spent on the nice brochures could be better focused on the students. Face value though, Lola's appearance is much nicer, beautiful, cleaner, bright, airy, etc. To the point that when combined with the reviews that I read I almost feel like I am being duped by the marketing effect.

I still want to see Lola's Place in action while kids are there and I would like to take my child to both to see if she has a preference and how she interacts with the class and teachers she would be with.

After visiting both, my gut tells me MCHL and that has only been furthered by the reviews I have read. But I want to make sure that I am making the most educated decision and not ruling out Lola's for the wrong reasons.

I am thinking of applying to both and sending her to Lola's for now and then if/when my child gets accepted into MCHL we can make the decision at that point. However, if Lola's is really as bad as it seems from the reviews, I would rather save some money in the interim and send my child to chesterbrook for a couple of months until MCHL is available.

[Margery]

I know nothing about Lola's but two of my grandchildren (now 8 and 10) attended the Montessori school on Church Road in Sterling for preschool through K. Both are excellent readers, have good study habits, and seemed very happy while at the school and my daughter was very pleased with the faculty and the school as a whole.

I find it very odd that teachers are now called Ms. Alice, Ms. Julia, etc. I don't understand why they aren't referred to as Miss Smith, Miss Jones, etc. Does anyone understand the theory behind the usage of first names?

[bdaddyo]

Thanks Margery. I had actually read your review on another post and was happy to find it. Thanks for sharing again.

Anyone else have any other insight?

[Arianna Leguizamo]

[FONT=Verdana]My child goes to Lola's Place cascades he loves his teacher and he is learning so much I also had to make the same decision as you but Lola’s place is an accredited school and Montessori house is not .[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana]Accreditation is not easy to get that is way their is only 5 school in VA That are accredited a lot of the review that you read are for the Boyd school not Lola’s place and you are right they have to do with bad management.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana]But Lola's place has a great Director she is always available for parent and once a month she host a parent participation group were you can give your feed back on what you want to see in the school.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana]For Montessori house reviews visit Virginia department of social service web page and you will see review form the state inspector as that school function as a day care.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana]Good luck in your choice.[/FONT]

[noble_reader]

The fee for these schools look way too high on their brochures, does anyone know what's the actual tution fee they take for pre-schoolers (9 - 6 full day option)?

[newnewsmama]

Originally Posted by noble_reader

The fee for these schools look way too high on their brochures, does anyone know what's the actual tution fee they take for pre-schoolers (9 - 6 full day option)?

All the Montessori schools I visited charge the tuition rates they have published on their brochures. Montessori schools are expensive. The full day (they actually call it extended day because many Montessori schools define full day as 8:30 - 3:00) program normally runs $15000 for nine months.