Mount Vernon Place Early Learning Center

We entered MVPELC in January, 2013.
We have two children, a then 6 month old and a 4 year old, and MVPELC offered
us a place where we could keep the children together during the day while
providing my older child a preschool environment. It is also steps away from my
place of employment. While it was ideal in many respects, within weeks of our
joining the center, things began to devolve.
First, the Executive Director
resigned. The President of the Board, William R. Green, hosted a parents'
meeting where encouraged parents to sign up to volunteer during the day (which
we did) and to participate on the Board (we also signed up for this). Then
staff started getting fired. We were told as parents that things were happening
at the school that we didn't know about and that if we did know, we would be
appalled. The preschool teacher was fired suddenly and accused of denying a
child food at lunch. One of the infant room teachers was fired soon after that
and accused of threatening the acting director. Soon thereafter the toddler
teacher and another infant room teacher put in their notice to leave ~ both
received calls on the days they put in their notice telling them they were not
welcome back to the center. The remaining staff advised parents that they were
told that if they spoke with us about the staff turnover they faced
repercussions including being fired.
In March a new preschool teacher was
hired. We were told that she had over 30 years of experience teaching and that
she would be changing the preschool curriculum to something more rigorous.
Eventually, the Board President
advised the parents that a new Executive Director had been hired. A parent meeting
to meet her took place in late March, with the planned start date for the new
person of April 1. At the parent meeting, the new hire expressed her wishes for
the center to succeed and described her plans for staff hiring and firing. She
described her background and generally discussed some of her plans for the
future, including creating a kindergarten. Again at this meeting, the Board
President advised the parents that, with regard to all the staff firings, if we
were aware of all the terrible things those staff were doing to our children,
we would want those staff fired, too.
The new ED started on April 1 and
lasted exactly 1 week in the position. Several parents noticed her absence on
April 8, and questioned her absence on April 9. On April 9, parents were
advised that the new ED was not a good fit, that she was never the ED (that the
preschool teacher was in fact the ED all along), that she was only temporary,
and that she would not be returning to the school. Several of the parents
became concerned and did some investigating on their own.
These are some of the pieces we
learned during that investigation:
1. The new ED had never been told
she was only temporary, that the position was a shared position, that she was
to be responsible only for licensing and admin, etc. (and the job advertisement
made no mention of such limitations.)
2. The new ED had requested several
times of the Board President to see the budgets and the expenses for the school
so that she could begin working on those aspects of managing the school. She
had been denied access to all financial information.
3. Some staff had had paychecks
bounce and paychecks had been short for some people on some occasions. There
were also allegations that payroll was being run through the Board President's
development company.
4.
A parent whose child was on daycare vouchers was asked to pay above her
voucher co-pay in violation of the voucher agreement.
At this point the concern many of
the parents were feeling became more acute. If the school was so unstable as to
be unable to keep staff how would our children fare in that environment
long-term? If the school was misappropriating funds paid for tuition, what
would the long-term impact be? If there were no designated ED in place, what
would the licensing implications be? If the preschool teacher was actually the
ED, what would that mean for the preschool program?
We
have been disappointed with the Board?s response to our concerns. We made it clear we would not keep our
children at the school if there was no change.
Sadly, we have not been given a response that makes us feel comfortable
that change will occur. As of the
writing of this review, one of the families active in trying to communicate
with the Board was asked to leave MVPELC, another infant teacher quit, and one
of the infant rooms closed down for lack of enrollment. We are
removing our children from the school and do not recommend that anyone looking
for a stable, safe environment for their children place their children at
MVPELC.