Aegis Pre School & Daycare

My almost 3 year old has been attending Aegis since he was 8 months old and my almost 4 month old just started there. My husband and I have only had positive experiences with them and our son is thriving in their preschool. Everyday he goes to preschool happy and comes home with something new. He is counting to 15, very close to understanding the days of the week, knows his ABCs and working on identifying letters. Socially he is excelling as well. He understands how to wait his turn (wish kids at the park knew how), sharing and communicating with other kids. Lately he has been talking with us about what ‘his job’ is versus our job — clearly something he picked up at Aegis. They also work closely with Childcare Links to ensure they are up to date on activities and their developmental needs. Last month they had someone from the program come and observe the preschool as a whole and each child individually.
Throughout his development from hitting, teething, potty training and speaking Aegis has been our support. They communicate openly with us about our son’s progress and helped us with suggestions when we were struggling. They want to make sure they are reinforcing our values while he is in their care.
We also have had positive experiences with all the members of the Aegis team. The first Unilocal review stated that Hena was the only one with a background in childhood development. I am fairly certain that isn’t the case anymore. My oldest was there (on the daycare side of things) when the girl who posted worked at Aegis on the preschool side of things. Although my son wasn’t on the preschool side of things from what I observed there was no lack of attention or educating that was taking place. I would certainly say that is still the case now. My husband and I are both teachers so we know what a proper educational setting and experience is like. If we didn’t feel our children were getting what they need, or what we pay for, we would remove them without hesitation.
Just to address the tying kids down. I have often arrived to pick my son up when it was either story time or snack time. Often he was in a floor level highchair during these events. I assumed during story time it was to keep him in the circle. He wasn’t upset about this and I completely understand the need to have him in the highchair. He now sits independently during circle time. When he was learning to sit in the toddler chairs at the table I occasionally saw him with a highchair type strap that is connected to the toddler chair (I assume this is the ‘belting down’ that she is referring to). Again, I assume it was for the safety of my son. They needed to make sure he didn’t 1: fall out of the chair and 2: stay at the table with his peers. I could only imagine the chaos that would take place during lunch if all the kids were running around. We still use the strap on his booster chair at home.
Overall I would highly recommend Aegis. When we started my son there we assumed we would graduate from their daycare and go to a preschool in a more school like setting. However, the structure, education and love he gets at Aegis is so valuable. We have no intention of moving him until he being Kindergarten.

If I could give this place less than one star I would. I worked here and witnessed the business ran first hand. All but the director (at least during my time of employment, which was 2.5 years) are severely inexperienced. None of them had any classes in Early Childhood Education or Preschool teaching experience. The director is very money motivated, she charges extortionate rates for ‘preschool’ but it’s essentially daycare. They close the preschool for two weeks every Christmas and force parents to still pay. There were several licensing safety violations, including allowing the children to play in rooms they weren’t licensed to be in, medications and cleaning products within a child’s reach, and when a child wouldn’t stay sitting they would LITERALLY tie them into the chair with a belt.