Canterbury School

This school treats their staff poorly, as well as their prospective staff poorly. They keep unprofessional staff members who mistreat other staff and kids there. They see no problem with teachers screaming at the top of lungs and flinging children if they're not listening. I interviewed with them and worked there for a day and before the day ended, I was informed about problems at the school by another staff member who was distraught from the mistreatment of a teacher who has been there for awhile. This teacher who had been terrible towards other staff, was the same way towards me but I tried to brush it off, thinking she was just tired and having a bad day, until the other staff member told me that teacher had been terrible to everybody, yet the school keeps her. The school asked me to let them know after my first day when I wanted to come back to officially start and I let them know. I never heard from them after that. Yet, they keep posting job ads online looking for new staff members, which leads me to think the postings are not real and misleading to interested applicants. I contacted them letting them know I had tried to reach them weeks back and that I was still interested, and again, they completely ignored me. I don't recommend this school to anyone looking for a teaching position. I also don't recommend parents bringing your children there because they will be under the watch of unprofessional teachers who may mistreat them because the directors allow it. The school is old, unkept, and not in the cleanest state. By the end of the day the last time I was there, I could feel myself getting sick from the lack of proper disinfection at the school. I recommend you look at other nearby schools who treat their staff and students with respect carry the utmost professionalism.
Jan 9th, 2019

Jun 20th, 2016

Mar 17th, 2016

Highly recommended!
Oct 28th, 2015

I’d like to share my experience with Canterbury School given that is hard to find helpful reviews about this daycare. My daughter started going to Canterbury School when she was 10 weeks old, and stayed there until she was almost 5 months, so I can only speak to the young infants classroom: 1) My husband and I work, so we rely on the school to be punctual so we can get to work on time. The day care is open 730a-6p but unfortunately routinely the young infant room wasn't open until 745a or later and only one teacher might be present to receive children for all classes. In my experience it was usually the toddler teacher that was always on time. So your immobile little one may be in the same room as the older kids until the remaining staff arrives. Not sure how two small babies are handled since the older rooms aren't very prepared (floor covering, cribs, etc.) and a teacher can only hold one child at a time. 2) The staffing model is based on full-time classroom teachers and “floating” assistants. For the young infant room, there is one full-time teacher who is there most of the time from 730-to sometime in the afternoon (330 or 4 maybe?), but then other assistants (floaters) will be working in different classrooms depending on the needs. This sounds like a good idea, but it seems like what can happen is that the full timer often times ends up taking care of all of the young infants, which means a ratio of 1:6 teachers to babies in the worst case scenario. This meets state minimum requirements but I know other daycares have a guaranteed 1:3 or 1:4 model vs floating. 3) The other disadvantage of having a floater staffing model is that the application of care is very inconsistent. So for example, in the morning my husband would talk to the full-time teacher and let her know that my daughter needed to wear her bib for the whole day to avoid getting a rash on her neck, but when I picked her up, the floater wouldn’t know about it. This is an example of one of multiple situations that happened because of the apparent lack of communication between the teachers and assistants. Not a deal-breaker. Just mentioning it so that you're aware. 4) The deciding factor for us to pull our daughter out of this daycare was the fact that she came back home with 2 scratches on her body in one week (I uploaded actual photos but I don't know if you will be able to see them). One of them was a scrape (it scabbed over) and the other one was more superficial. To add to that, see the note I got from school the day my daughter came back with the scratches saying my daughter cried really hard that day. When I brought this to the attention of the full-time teacher, she said “I will ask around and let you know” (which we understood to mean she would ask the floaters). But unfortunately we never got any further explanation. So after not hearing back, I spoke to the owner and her first reaction to this comment was “send me a picture of the scratch. My guess is that one of the teachers could have forgotten to remove her jewelry.” At that moment, I felt like she was invested in investigating what happened, and attentive. Unfortunately, this attitude quickly changed the next day as she approached me in the hallway while I was going in to pick my daughter up and she said “the teachers are saying this happened at home. I fully trust them. I’m concerned to hear that you’re so concerned about this. Children get bruises and scratches from playing and this will continue to happen as they grow older”… when I asked about what her policies were about long nails and jewelry her answer was “we don’t have policies.” All of that to say that this situation was handled poorly not only at the classroom level (see the note from the full-time teacher attached), but also at the school level. We really wanted to like this place, but for the reasons stated above, this didn't work for us. Some of the people there like Ms. Esther or Ms. Marine were outstanding, but two people can't make the entire experience what it needs to be.
Jul 25th, 2016