EVERGLADES ACADEMY

I cannot warn you enough NOT to have your child attend this school. When I first visited the school and reserved a spot for my, at the time unborn, daughter it was under different ownership.  When I returned from maternity leave it had just changed ownership.  In the beginning it was okay, there were two good teachers but then teachers that had been with the school for years started leaving.  Within a span of a few months some serious incidents occurred with my child. Each time the owner, who speaks no English so you need a translator to communicate with her, did not take any responsibility or express any concern.  There were several incidents but I will list the last 3, leading up to an official DCF investigation. First, on March 31st, the teacher who only had two children was not watching my daughter and allowed her to sit in front of the heavy metal door, when another teacher opened the door she could not see my daughter and her arm got caught under the door causing a deep abrasion and swelling, if the door had been opened any quicker the arm could have easily been broken. On April 6th a new teacher was with my daughter, I had gone down to give her a bottle at noon right after her lunch. I had to work late that day, at 5:20 the teacher called and asked if she could give my child a bottle. I thought they were checking because they thought I would be coming soon, I told her of course to give her a bottle.  When I got home that evening I realized that all of the bottles I had sent except for the one I gave her and the one given to her at 5:20 were unused, and my daughter had not been given anything to eat for over 5 hours. When I talked to them the next day the teacher said she had been really busy all day and had been in a couple of rooms, she took no responsibility. The final incident occurred on April 22nd and led to us pulling my daughter right away from the school. I was called that day and told my daughter had a few minor scratches she gave herself while she was in the crib, they said she was fine so I didn?t worry about it since babies will scratch themselves occasionally. When I picked her up she had been changed into a long sleeve shirt, which was odd because it was 90 degrees but I thought maybe she was out of short sleeve shirts. We got home and I got ready to give her a bath, when I took off her shirt I saw adult nail marks that cut into the skin on her arm (they curved out so she couldn?t have done them to herself, not to mention the size), the marks were accompanied by a half dollar size bruise. I also saw the clothes she had been wearing were not dirty or wet and the next day I saw she had several short sleeve shirts so it appeared they changed her to cover up the marks. My husband and I went in the next day to see if maybe someone tried to stop her from falling and gave her the marks; they insisted she gave them to herself and refused to show us the video due to privacy laws. It would have been impossible for her to make those marks herself and the two other children in the room couldn?t sit up so it had to be an adult that made the marks. We told them not knowing what happened we couldn?t have our daughter attend any longer but asked that they let us know when they had reviewed the video and to tell us what happened. After a week of no word back we decided their behavior was suspicious and we needed to inform DCF. The DCF medical staff that examined the marks (10 days after and they were still visible) agreed that they were adult size and could not have been self-inflicted?the investigation is still ongoing.