Lalita Bakshi (the owner of MKLA) initiated the withdrawal of our daughter from her Montessori school in Redlands. So she does not loose the money she tried to convince us to switch our daughter to her husbands daycare called Kids Land Academy in Redlands, which is located in the converted garage of their personal house. After we refused to take our child to her husban's daycare, Lalita started demanding money from us and was threatening us with a law suite and sending us to a collection agency.
Be ready this will be a very long read, because I have a lot of details to share. From the very beginning it seemed impossible to have a simple conversation with Lalita (the owner). As some of the other yelper noted, she never listens to you and always talks over you, and there is only one person's opinion matters to her - hers. In despite of the first negative impression and my gut feelings I still wanted to give this place a shot, because I've heard a lot of good thing about Montessori teaching and this school is very close to where we live. Our daughter started attending MLKA at the end of the August and she was 2 year and 7 months old at that time, which made her one of the youngest kids there. She started going there for 3 hours each day, 5 days per week, which costs our family $888. We were also charged some sort of admission fees of $400 and some material fees of $170. Which I think is a little steep for a traditional daycare, but again it is a Montessori we are talking about here.
Almost right away we started receiving complaints about our daughter's behavior and at some point we even started wondering if there is something that is terribly wrong with our child. I tried to explain that our daughter is the youngest child there and that since we only speak Russian language to her and that all she knows. And of course none of that mattered to Lalita, because she only cared about her own opinion and did not even tried to listen to any of my reasoning. She complained to us that our daughter grabs other kids' toys, runs around the classroom, distructs everyone and does not comply with teacher's requests. When you hear this type of things about your child from someone for the first time, you start noticing those thing and even agree with the person, wondering if there is something wrong with your child, maybe you need to do something about it. The state of paranoia feels your mind, but then you look around, talk to some experience friends and family and you realize that your 2 years old behaves like any 2 years old should and if anyone might need a professional attention, it is the person who complains about the behavior of a 2 years old. Lalita even tried to make us feel bad by saying that one of the teachers left the job because of our daughter's behaviour... or maybe she quit because of her manager? I know that I would've.
My father was helping us with dropping off and picking up our daughter from the school and he noticed that few times when he was dropping her off she seemed terrified when she saw that Lalita was teaching the class in the morning. The sad part is that our daughter could not even complain if somebody hit her in the classroom due to language barrier. My father also noticed that few kids pushed my daughter when she tried to say goodbye, and no one even said anything to them for pushing my daughter. Our daughter was constantly getting sick, which might be normal for the kids of her age, but no other kids were getting sick as many times. One time our daughter got very sick and she was throwing up after she came back home from MLKA. I was terrified because she couldn't keep water or any food down. I took her to an ER to get her checked and luckily it was nothing serious. When my daughter was sick Lalita never showed her concern about the health of my daughter and why she was missing classes, sometimes even for 10 days.
Finally, Lalita suggested that our daughter might not be a "Montessori" child and that we should try to put her into another daycare, which her husband runs. She basically told us to leave so we left. After we told her that we no longer will be bringing our daughter neither to her nor to her husband's daycare, Lalita started asking for money because she wanted at least 30-days notice even though that the admission money that we paid in the beginning were supposed to go towards the last two weeks and also, the material fees that we paid her and never used up, will be staying with her.
Montessori Kids Land Academy Reviews
Lalita Bakshi (the owner of MKLA) initiated the withdrawal of our daughter from her Montessori school in Redlands. So she does not loose the money she tried to convince us to switch our daughter to her husbands daycare called Kids Land Academy in Redlands, which is located in the converted garage of their personal house. After we refused to take our child to her husban's daycare, Lalita started demanding money from us and was threatening us with a law suite and sending us to a collection agency.
Be ready this will be a very long read, because I have a lot of details to share. From the very beginning it seemed impossible to have a simple conversation with Lalita (the owner). As some of the other yelper noted, she never listens to you and always talks over you, and there is only one person's opinion matters to her - hers. In despite of the first negative impression and my gut feelings I still wanted to give this place a shot, because I've heard a lot of good thing about Montessori teaching and this school is very close to where we live. Our daughter started attending MLKA at the end of the August and she was 2 year and 7 months old at that time, which made her one of the youngest kids there. She started going there for 3 hours each day, 5 days per week, which costs our family $888. We were also charged some sort of admission fees of $400 and some material fees of $170. Which I think is a little steep for a traditional daycare, but again it is a Montessori we are talking about here.
Almost right away we started receiving complaints about our daughter's behavior and at some point we even started wondering if there is something that is terribly wrong with our child. I tried to explain that our daughter is the youngest child there and that since we only speak Russian language to her and that all she knows. And of course none of that mattered to Lalita, because she only cared about her own opinion and did not even tried to listen to any of my reasoning. She complained to us that our daughter grabs other kids' toys, runs around the classroom, distructs everyone and does not comply with teacher's requests. When you hear this type of things about your child from someone for the first time, you start noticing those thing and even agree with the person, wondering if there is something wrong with your child, maybe you need to do something about it. The state of paranoia feels your mind, but then you look around, talk to some experience friends and family and you realize that your 2 years old behaves like any 2 years old should and if anyone might need a professional attention, it is the person who complains about the behavior of a 2 years old. Lalita even tried to make us feel bad by saying that one of the teachers left the job because of our daughter's behaviour... or maybe she quit because of her manager? I know that I would've.
My father was helping us with dropping off and picking up our daughter from the school and he noticed that few times when he was dropping her off she seemed terrified when she saw that Lalita was teaching the class in the morning. The sad part is that our daughter could not even complain if somebody hit her in the classroom due to language barrier. My father also noticed that few kids pushed my daughter when she tried to say goodbye, and no one even said anything to them for pushing my daughter. Our daughter was constantly getting sick, which might be normal for the kids of her age, but no other kids were getting sick as many times. One time our daughter got very sick and she was throwing up after she came back home from MLKA. I was terrified because she couldn't keep water or any food down. I took her to an ER to get her checked and luckily it was nothing serious. When my daughter was sick Lalita never showed her concern about the health of my daughter and why she was missing classes, sometimes even for 10 days.
Finally, Lalita suggested that our daughter might not be a "Montessori" child and that we should try to put her into another daycare, which her husband runs. She basically told us to leave so we left. After we told her that we no longer will be bringing our daughter neither to her nor to her husband's daycare, Lalita started asking for money because she wanted at least 30-days notice even though that the admission money that we paid in the beginning were supposed to go towards the last two weeks and also, the material fees that we paid her and never used up, will be staying with her.