A Step Ahead Childcare & Education Center

In my opinion, I do not feel like this is a safe daycare. My son (5 months) was left sleeping on his stomach before being old enough to roll over and he could have suffocated. This could have been happening for weeks; the only reason I know this is because I went to pick him up early one day. He also was only given a bottle twice throughout a 9 hour day instead of the required 4 bottles. Naps for a 3-5 month old seemed like suggestions, some days he'd have only a single 20 minute nap during the day, other days they would let him sleep for 3 hours straight. We also frequently would bring him home in diapers that were not the ones we supplied. They would also not always log diaper changes, leading us to believe there were some days where he had 6 hours between diaper changes. A much smaller complaint, they would rarely upload pictures to our app when we were told to expect 1-2 a day at least. I'm fairly confident they had staff not trained to work with infants in the infants room to save money on staff. Separately, I also witnessed a daycare worker dragging a child from behind by the arms, dragging them from one room to another. On top of all of this, when I brought these concerns to the owner (Tyler), he was incredibly arrogant and dismissive of my concerns. He literally was smiling at me as I told him the safety concerns my child experienced. Tyler chalked it up to "transition" in staffing which isn't much excuse when a child's safety is concerned. This is a particular concern for children too young to speak up for themselves, such as my son. He did not seem like someone that was running a childcare to take care of kids, only to make money.

We had a tour scheduled to see if this would work for daycare. We showed up and were completely ignored for over 5 minutes while waiting by the front door. There is a giant glass window so they could very obviously see we were there and we also rang the doorbell. After waiting for some time a staff member left and I let them know we had a scheduled daycare tour. Once we entered the door one of the staff members told me I should have rang the doorbell. I let her know that we did ring the doorbell. And then she proceeded to tell me that obviously the kids were loud so that’s why they didn’t hear it. It shouldn’t have mattered because they could have used their eyes to see the front entrance. If you can’t pay attention to the front door and the staff is rude to potential new families you don’t deserve to run a daycare. The city needs to come shut this place down. I would never send my child to a place where safety and security are clearly not a priority.

My experience so far with this daycare has been great. I’ve been having lots of issue within my personal life and needed childcare immediately. Ms Deb was really fast on getting my kids into childcare. She saved me from a lot of stress. Ms Deb and Ms Ariana made transitioning into a new schedule and a new chapter of my family’s life so easy and fun. I’ve never sent my kids to daycare so I had lots of questions and they didn’t seem bothered at all. The teachers are all so friendly and seem very caring. I also love how they have an app that sends me notifications and photos throughout the day to keep me updated about my kids.

I love the experience with taking my son to this daycare. Deb is the director and she manages all the aspects of the daycare well and the transition of kids to be smooth. My son has never been in a daycare setting before and was pretty hard for him and still is to integrate yet staff do their best to accommodate the boy's needs. I loved the open nice place, with big windows, i love the play area, the activities, the app and the ways they make a teaching point on different topics when my son plays too rough. I appreciate all their care for him and what he's learning. I have deep faith that he's growing a good little boy and each person on his way is role model on everything. For me cleanliness and daylight large windows in a classroom are one of the most important aspects when it comes to daycare. So he learns good habits by copying the teacher's actions. Thank you!

Deb was awesome and very informative. Her heart and vision are definitely in the right place. Looking forward to having our child cared for by A Step Ahead!