Cadence Academy Preschool

Id like to start off this review by saying that not everything about cadence was bad. Tonia, the director, seems to genuinely care about the kids in her care and reported to us the incident I’m about to describe when she could have hidden it. Tonia is unfortunately beholden to a very strict corporate culture that wouldn’t give her any flexibility to run the school as she wanted to, and I think if they had, cadence would be a much better school. We expressed our concerns several times to Tonia and it seems that corporate wasn’t willing to take action until my child’s safety was at risk. The final straw and the catalyst for us to pull our daughter was they left my daughter out on a playground by herself for several minutes. Two separate security checks were conducted by her teachers, and both times the teacher said she “thought she saw her,” but from the video it’s obvious they were complacent and rushed through it. My daughter was on the other side of some equipment where she couldn’t see them going into the classroom. My daughter was not found by her teachers either. It wasn’t until another classroom came out that they saw her and took her back to her classroom. If that class hadn’t come outside, how long would it have been before anyone noticed she was missing? What if she’d decided to play with no one around and fallen and seriously injured herself with no one around to give her emergency care? What ifs plague me. Every time I think about this incident, I get sick to my stomach thinking about what could have happened in that time. Before this, we first started noticing issues in both of the rooms my daughter was in when nearly every time I picked her up, one or more of the teachers were yelling at kids instead of redirecting or following the conscious discipline that the school told us they followed. All of the teachers we have had at cadence seemed frustrated, short fused, stressed, and like they were emotionally and physically not handling the very large class sizes with which they had to contend. We were also told that there would be an emphasis on school curriculum and learning with personalized learning plans based on the kids interests, but I witnessed very minimal educational engagement. Many days the kids would just participate in free play all day, but the children do not have enough toys to keep them engaged for that length of time. We even recommended toy rotations and that never happened. One teacher shamed my daughter for having an accident on a rug, expecting me to apologize for a 2 year old new to potty training having an accident. On two separate occasions, a child’s private medical information was revealed to me even though it was absolutely not necessary to do so. The classroom management in both rooms we were in needed a lot of work. Even one of their own teachers told me they’d never enroll their kid in this school and they recommend I pull my daughter as soon as a new school was available. The kids barely go outside to get energy out. I could go on and on. Again, the director reported the incident to me and for that I’m eternally grateful, but I would not recommend sending your child here until Tonia is given more ability to run the program how she needs to with maybe better classroom sizes and to fire and hire at her discretion. Corporate was always this looming entity over our heads, and this incident highlighted how little power Tonia had to do what was best for the children. **I’d also like to add that the baby rooms at cadence have the nicest, most engaged teachers I’ve ever met. Everything I’ve discussed above applies to the two classrooms our daughter was in, and I cannot speak for the other classrooms.

I recently called to inquire about infant availability and was initially told there was space. However, when I mentioned I had a childcare voucher, I was quickly told they only had availability for full-paying families. While I understand centers have their own policies, I left the call feeling disappointed. The way the voucher was dismissed made it seem like it’s not “real” or valued support, which is unfortunate. Childcare vouchers are still payment—just from a different source—and many families rely on them. I hope the center considers being more mindful of how that message comes across in the future.

We had a scheduled tour and when we showed up, we were immediately greeted with "you know we're full until March?" No one even asked for our names or any information about our child. The "tour" lasted about five minutes and it just felt like they wanted us to leave. Maybe we caught them on an off day, I don't know, but the whole vibe of the place was stressful and not warm or kind.

My 3 year old attends Cadence Academy. I am glad that I picked this establishment. For this being her first time not being in an in home child care, I was super nervous, but the teachers and management have given me such peace of mind. From what I can see, the director, Ferrin, has a pretty close relationship with each child. She is always willing to do whatever it takes to make sure that each child is comfortable in their environment throughout the day.

When I needed to switch my little one to fulltime care, we chose Cadence for its convenient location between home and work. It was the best decision we could have made. His teacher, Ms. Beka has been nothing but amazing! You can tell how much she loves the kiddos and my little guy adores her. She's been an amazing partner when it came to helping get him potty trained before he was 3 and I've just seen so much growth in him since he started here a little over 6 months ago.