So I'll start by saying I can't name the business…yet as the investigation is not totally over but boy do I have a story for you reddit friends.
So I work in childcare at a preschool. I've been at this location for about 6 months, I just moved to the area in January and this was the job I got to make sure I had a paycheck while getting settled. In the beginning it seemed like a great fit – the boss was friendly and progressive ideals about child rearing and decent wages for the industry. The staff (teachers) were incredible, talking about making new life long friendships. Great work ethic, clearly in it for the kids and making a difference in their lives, something I myself am passionate about.
As the months went by it became clear something was up. It started small-not having materials we needed to do curriculum, going into my classroom and taking down things I'd had put up, moving my personal belongings. Slowly staff began to quit, within the first month we lost two solid teachers. My boss also started on these new rules that she would make up on the spot. For example, we suddenly couldn't play Disney music off Pandora because Disney might sue us or we could not let children have lunch until our few half day kids left (they left right when lunch would start but sometimes parents are ten minutes late). We would get in trouble daily for new rules that were truly made up on the spot. Not a huge deal but it just kept getting crazier -suddenly some teachers weren't allowed to wear hats, my boss claimed it was unprofessional (mind you we wear a logo t-shirt and leggings as a uniform) yet other teachers like myself never were told this. Let's not even get into the issues with payroll being constantly late.
It continues to get crazy, covid has been a major concern in this industry and during this time we were required to have kids be tested before coming to school. There was an incident where our director allowed a child to enter without physical proof of a test and one of our teachers who has a daughter at the school was very upset by this and confronted my boss on the matter. She was fired on the spot, my boss claimed she was texting parents misinformation (none of which is true) and now that ex-teacher is currently in a lawsuit against my boss.
So a month after all this goes down, we are crazy short staffed and of course COVID is still wreaking havoc on us teachers so staff is constantly out sick. Ratio laws for California state we have to 1:12 and we were constantly going over this ratio. My boss would turn and blind eye and then claim it was our fault for leaving classrooms (imagine trying to herd all 12 4 year olds to a bathroom in the middle of class for a single student, it's damn near impossible to keep it from getting chaotic). We told our boss these concerns many times and all fell on deaf ears. Finally licensing gets alerted and starts showing up to investigate. All us teachers work together to provide evidence that we are forced to step out of ratio among other violations.
We just got word last night that licensing has closed their investigation and found my boss guilty of several major code violations, all of which require her to inform parents and pay quite a fine. The worst part? Licensing has called and warned all us teachers that our boss is looking to scapegoat this on one of us and fire that person. Needless to say we all agreed that if she does this then all of us will quit on the spot. Thankfully licensing has agreed to be a reference for us as we all look for new jobs. Just wanted to share this crazy tale and those of you who are parents and looking for childcare- always speak to your teachers they have the real tea on how well that facility runs.