Children's Lighthouse of Viridian

BEWARE: BAIT-AND-SWITCH TACTICS Do NOT fall for their waiting list scam. They will gladly take your money, mislead you about start dates, and leave you scrambling for childcare at the last minute. This is not just my experience—it’s a pattern with this daycare. When I tried to address the issue, I was completely ignored by the owners, Navi and Varun, despite multiple attempts to contact them. Ashley, the manager, outright refused to provide updates, and the entire process of trying to rectify the situation was disrespectful and unprofessional. I tried to be extremely patient and give them several opportunities over the course of an entire month, but they repeatedly ignored all of these attempts. If management is willing to deceive and ignore parents upfront, imagine how they handle everything else. Their disregard for families speaks volumes about how they run their business and interact with children. If they try to respond and act like they tried to resolve any issues, I promise over an entire month, the owners absolutely refused to even return a phone call. AVOID AT ALL COSTS.

We recently admitted our kid to your Viridian Location. It is for the first time my kid was going to a day care and it was not easy. We struggled for a week but was still a success, she was able to attend 2 out of 5 days. Once the team was able to handle her for half an hour or so after we leave she would stay till her nap time and we would pick up before nap. Second week we were so excited, first day of school on second week we were able to leave her to the class and as my wife was leaving the director Ashley Barringer came out to the parking lot and suggested that we should take our kid out of school with quote ‘We should try it next time’. It was very disappointing to hear this rather than I’t takes time let’s be patient’. As a well established day care we were at lease expecting this much and for sure you might have countless children that had trouble starting school. This should not be something new and enough to suggest us we take our kid out of school. So this suggestion to take our kid out of school was not fair. Then the process started immediately we had to take the our child back home that day and they mentioned they will refund both the registration and deposit back. Next day we called for refund and was mentioned the registration was not refundable. If it was us taking our kid out of school on our own terms then it would make sense that we will not get our registration money back. Suggesting us we should take our kids out of school and also taking the registration money is not fair. Every time I call or go, they said their owner is out of town or keeps on transferring me from one department to another giving me a run around. Very poor customer service and very poor management.

The administration and teachers love my daughter so much. It feels like a second family when you walk in. It’s also the cleanest daycare I have ever stepped into it. They treat their staff well and it translates to good childcare.

I love this daycare, my baby is so happy here and so do I. I get notifications about diaper change, feeding, naps, activities and I also have access to the cámaras, both apps that Lighthouse uses are amazing and also his teachers are super sweet. I had him in the waiting list since I was 3 months pregnant and he got in at 6 months.

Overall, this is a good early learning center, and I’ve never had concerns about my child’s safety. The staff is generally warm and caring, and many clearly enjoy working with young children. It is definitely the best day care option for this part of North Arlington — bright, clean and comfortable. And because most of the students live in the Viridian neighborhood, we’ve met and befriended many other families from here and our kids are growing up together. That said, there’s frequent turnover in some classrooms, and many staff members don’t appear to have formal training in early childhood education - nor plans to pursue it. At this price point, that’s disappointing. It often feels like my child is being supervised by random babysitters rather than qualified educators. The staff turnover is jaw dropping. In my son’s Pre K class (where he learned significantly less than his friends in public school), there seemed to be a new teacher every couple of months. The owners, who seem to have only an entrepreneurial interest, only pop up to make incredibly pushy pleas to buy their daughter’s Girl Scout cookies. They will email parents about the cookies (which is highly inappropriate) and once one of the owners stunned parents at the foyer entrance to forcefully hawk those dang cookies 😂 it made a lot of parents really uncomfortable. And this place has a notorious waitlist money grab. Neighbors talk about it all the time. You have to pay a fee, I think about $250 or so, to put kid(s) on the waitlist. And I think it’s per kid. Then after some point in time, you have to pay the waitlist fee AGAIN..to hold your spot even if no spot has opened for you. I know people who were waitlisted for at least a year and half…so they were asked to pay to be on the waitlist more than once. Then when you enroll, that money is not applied to your tuition, registration fees or school fees — it’s just gone. I suppose this is how the franchise model was set up, but it just seems so unfair. It makes me want to open my own daycare franchise — because these people are raking in the dough! Another ongoing frustration is the pressure to leave glowing reviews. Constant, constant text and email messages. While feedback is important, the number of requests feels excessive and out of touch with the real experiences of families.