Barefoot Preschool

Our son went to Barefoot when he turned two. It is a GREAT place for letting your little one explore and have fun. The culture and all the activities are second to none. Barefoot always is up to something fun and active. When you enter, you can tell it is a place full of life and activities. The only hesitation about a 5 star review is how the ages are not totally separated out all day, so our two year old plays with the five year olds, which seems fine — but at these ages I feel they should be separate as these ages are SO wildly different developmentally and the two year olds can pick up some ‘older’ kid bad habits. Four and Five year olds play differently and I would recommend keeping them separate. The other recommendation is on administration. It is a full time job to administer a school with 20+ children. I have had experience now with two other schools, and the head of these other schools have a separate administrator who does not teach any classes which is quite amazing to keep the school organized and focused on the individual children’s development and progress. None-​the-​less my son was very happy here and we miss all the activities of Barefoot.

Truly a special place. So happy and grateful that my family found the school. The amount of patience and thought that goes into their daily efforts is mindblowing. Having lived in West Los Angeles for most of my life, it was awesome to find a learning environment inspired by the eclectic and diverse surroundings.

Barefoot has been great for our 4 year old. We’ve been at 3 different preschools with our older children and Barefoot is truly our favorite. The staff is friendly, communicative and thoughtful. The parents are professional, down-​to-​earth and inclusive.
My only regret is that we didn’t find this school sooner as our daughter is so very happy there. She has a strong group of friends and all of the children play together really well. (Because of this, play dates are a breeze!) Teachers are good at helping the children use their words with their friends and help each other out. They have field trips, family outings and homemade lunch! We love this school and will be sad to leave.

To be entirely clear: my son attended Barefoot in 2011, I posted this review after we withdrew him but all all reviews mysteriously disappeared. At the time of this review I truly believed that they would probably get their act together with a little experience. It looks like I was wrong. My experiences with another preschool and now with public school have really made me realize that Barefoot’s policies are so over the top and the environment is quite negative.
I really wanted to like this place. They talk a good talk, they made me think that my son would fit right into a small preschool family. I filled out all paperwork (extensive paperwork incidentally) before his start date and dropped off everything including his shot records, etc… When my husband brought my boy to school on his first day the owner insisted that he fill out all the paperwork again. She had evidently lost everything that I had completed before. I should have known then. From that point on it was endless drama. My son liked it, but never really bonded with the teachers. Every time I picked him up I felt like I was in trouble. It was either that I had the wrong lunch box, the wrong food in the lunch box, the wrong shoes on his feet, the wrong this, the wrong that… everything. They have a web site with an online calendar which is good for absolutely nothing. I showed up on an early pick up day at the time the online calendar indicated only to be told I was 30 minutes late and be charged $ 30 in late fees. I was told another day not to pack a lunch on an early pick up day only to show up and be reprimanded for not packing a lunch for my son. In short, their communication is terrible. On parent night, they had my son’s folder out for display with the wrong name and wrong birthdate (down to the wrong year) on the cover. The owner was in utter dismay that my husband and I thought this was a problem. Another day I had arranged for an early drop off as per their manifesto of school guidelines only to find no one at the school. The owner’s husband came running up (who I had never met) and offered to let me into the property and offered to watch my son for me until someone arrived. So my choices were to allow a strange man (never met the guy) to watch my 3 year old, or to be late for work. I chose late for work. Aside from their missteps which are the signs of a new business and an inexperienced staff, they are closed for every, single Jewish holiday. If you are unfamiliar with all the Jewish holidays in early fall, do your homework and figure out if you can take that huge amount of time off from work. They are also expensive considering that they do not provide any kind of lunch program. Other preschools in the area charge less and do more.