Mountain View KinderCare

My daughter is in 2s class under miss Suzy and Kristina. At first when she moved it was a rocky transition from toddler to twos but with change in management and teachers for 2s class it had been great to have her go this class. Both the teachers are great wth kids, very engaging, entertaining and seems to be enjoying the kids around them. This is very important as it shows they care for the kids. They receive kids with a smile and always have constructive and positive things to say about your kid which helps parents a lot.
New director and assistant director has been doing a great job managing the center too.
I would not hesitate putting my kid with these 2s teachers again. I hope they keep them around as long as possible :-)

We have been with this childcare center for about 1 year now, and I tell everyone whose looking for a trustworthy and honorable chilcare to stop in and check this place out. I have 2 children that attend this center currently and I am beyond pleased with the care, love and education this center provides to my girls. Every time I walk in I am always greeted by the lovely Assistant Director Ms. Jessica whom is always so sweet and soft spoken and is always there for any needs of each family. The teachers are AMAZING! I have a few favorites just because both of my girls have created amazing relationships and friendships with them! Ms. Susy and Ms. Christina are amazing in my daughters toddler room and Ms. Marquela is the most amazing Pre-​K teacher for my older girl! They are always so excited to tell me what they’ve learned each day when I pick them up! This center truly cares for their kiddos like family. I would hands down recommend checking them out if you are looking for childcare in the Mountain View area. I can’t begin to express how impressed and satisfied I am with the child care they offer all of the sweet children there! Thank you KinderCare for always being so trust worthy and awesome to our children!

I have been at this daycare for 4 years now with two kids. It has had its ups and downs and went through a really rough patch at the beginning of 2015. Both the Director and Assistant Director quit and there was no one steering the ship. They brought in a long term director from Sunnyvale who got the place back on its feet and hired a new director. Honestly we only stayed through all of the turmoil due to the teachers. Our favorite infant room teacher, Ms. Jocy came back under the new management. We also love Ms. Briana and Ms. Emilie in infants, Ms. Teresa and Ms. Stefani in toddlers, Ms. Jayme and Ms. Suzy in preschool, and Ms Marquela in Pre-​K, as well as Ms. Rashmi who fills in each class as needed. There has been lots of turnover, and we have a few favorites who have left, but we do love all of the above, some who weathered the management storm with us. I actually received a personal apology from corporate about the chaos earlier in the year. Corporate has pledged to improve food over the next year as well. I am simply happy my children love their teachers, eat the food, take naps (well the youngest at least), and my 4 year old is reading. I have always felt my kids were safe and I feel like things have improved and I plan to continue to send my youngest here when her sister moves on. It is pricey, but the curriculum is good, food meets standards, other parents are nice (lots of tech folks), and my kids have made friends and enjoy their day.

NOTE: This review is about my experience with the INFANT ROOM only.
Our son has been attending the infant program at Mountain View Kindercare since he was 4 months old (he’s now 1) Overall, he loves going there. Mrs. Emilie and Miss Brianna in the infant room are excellent professionals with a real knack for dealing with babies. We were impressed with the kinds of activities they have planned and feel that our son is following a good curriculum — even at this early age. There have been a few issues around reporting or care usually when Mrs. Emilie or Miss Brianna are not around, but I have raised this with the **new** management staff (who are great by the way!) and they have dealt with it promptly.
Improvement suggestion: accept credit or debit cards for tuition payment, and create a process to setup a recurring charge on the credit/​debit card. Who uses checks these days?!

My son has been going to kindercare for the last few years. There have been so many changes with teachers and management in the last year that it’s very hard to keep up. The ONLY reason why I left my child there was because of Ms. Marquela she is the pre– k teacher and honestly one of the most caring and wonderful teachers in that center!!. Her care is genuine and has a very warm demeanor. Ms. Marquela always treated my child and I with the upmost respect. I will truly miss seeing her every day. I really hope this center pays more attention of who they hire not only teachers but management as well.

Our daughter has been going to KinderCare Mountain View for about 2.5 years now and we are quite happy there. She has bonded well with the teachers she has had and has made great friends. In particular, she has had Ms. Jayme as a teacher almost the entire time and Ms. Jayme has shown her great care and affection. In her second class, Ms. Dominique worked patiently with her to help her with some food pickiness. Though we have seen some good teachers leave due to issues that arise at the corporate level, there are still good and dedicated teachers who have stayed and make for a loving and caring atmosphere. The curriculum is a good mix between play-​based and academic-​style learning. Our daughter loves going there every morning and is happy when we pick her up. When we enter Kindercare every morning, we are always surprised to see how disciplined the kids are and some who are sad are being often seeing hugged by their teachers (at least in pre-​school and pre-​K). Our daughter has recently moved to Pre-​K, where she has Ms. Marquela, who has been at KinderCare for 20 years. She is a very good and a very warm person. Even though some of the comments on Unilocal are negative, one has to keep in mind that a particular daycare may not be suitable for all types of children. This does not mean that there is something intrinsically wrong with that specific daycare, but perhaps it was not a good match for their child. Choosing a daycare for one’s child is obviously an important decision and in the end all you can do is visit and get a sense of the place from the people who work there. No one else’s opinion is really going to matter than your own.

After 15 months with a nanny, we finally decided to put our son in daycare and I couldn’t be happier. The 3 month wait for him to start in the toddler room was well worthed. The credit mostly goes to the teachers in the toddler room. All of them pay good attention to the kids and are caring and put the new parents at ease.
Before he started, our son was extremely shy and timid. Ms. Stefani was very kind and listened to all our concerns about our son and takes amazing care of him. We could not be happier with Ms. Stefani for being so patient and making sure that he continues to develop while feeling secure and enjoys his time at the day care. He no longer cries when it is time to go there and is hardly ready to leave in the evening.
As all new parents know that first daycare experience is probably harder on the parents than on the kids. We were very fortunate that an excellent teacher like Ms. Stefani was assigned to our son.
As for the center, it is clean and generally has a happy atmosphere. The food they provide is a bit sad and could definitely use some creativity.

We just moved to the Bay Area and have been with Kindercare Mountain View for 5 months and Miss. Emilie has been so caring with our 10 month old. My little daughter loves her. Miss. Emilie knows what my little daughters schedule is like. I am very PLEASED with Miss Emilie’s work. This is for infants, i also have a 3 year old but there is a transition in my 3yr old class so I can’t comment on that yet. Hopefully this helps with the infants.

This was our daughter’s first daycare when she was 15 months old and just came from Spain, it was a hard situation for us, but thanks to Ms. Emilie the situation got easy and smooth. Ms. Emilie took care of my daughter for 9 months and helped us during transition to the next class. And now she moves to the infant room and is taking care of my 10 months old boy, we love her and her way of working with kids.
At Kinder Care Mountain View we had 3 complicate months where 4 of the good teachers quit and director and manager had also quit, but now they have really nice staff and they are always trying to improve.
We are happy with this place, although it is pretty pricey, but it’s equal to or cheaper than all comparable daycares around Mountain View and Palo Alto.

I watched this Mountain View KinderCare from the outside for two weeks in a row to make sure it was a safe place for my boy.
I noticed that the kids were out most of the day running and falling down without anybody watching them. There were two to three women most of the time talking to each other or on the phone outside without paying attention to the kids.
But it got worse after the kids were having lunch outside where one kid was left alone on four different days for almost 15– 20 minutes each time until they realized that there was a kid outside and then they brought the kid inside while he was crying.
So don’t EVER use this KinderCare for your kids!

2015 review: DO NOT SEND YOUR CHILD HERE! Complete disaster! Within the last 3 months 4 of the good teachers quit and director and manager have quit due to how this corporation has not only treated the staff poorly but also how the kids are neglected. They only care about money. The staff is so frustrated because they see all these problems but the corporation is NOT willing make changes or do ANYTHING that cost a penny to improve things here.
My child started here as an infant. By law they were required to provide a 4 to 1 kids to teacher ratio. That is the ONLY reason Kindercare provide a 4 to 1 ratio. If not required by law they would NOT be doing that. I know this because as soon as my child turned 2 they moved her up to the toddler class and the ratio goes as high as 18 to 1! Surprise they are no longer required to meet any ratio requirements. NOT an exaggeration, I actually counted during one of my drop off in the morning and there was literally 18 kids running around with 1 teacher who was trying to manage multiple poops and crying kids. You can totally see it on her face, she was so overwhelmed. Not only does the ratio go from 4:1 to 18:1 (they told us up to 14:1) once she turns 2, you now get the privilege of paying only 10% less for the honor.
Don’t even get me started on the food. I never paid attention when she was younger since we brought food from home. Once she turned 2 we let her eat their food so I stopped by once to see what they ate. OMG, I kid you not, they were giving canned food! The teachers are so overwhelmed that they had no idea if the kids ate anything or not.
If you just want your kid to be in a room full of kids and have no structure or any sort of learning with low quality food and have the privilege of paying almost $ 2k for it then Kindercare is the place for you.
If you’re a caring parent and care about your child and their development, for the love of God DO NOT send your child here!
Do some real research and go tour other places, you’ll have WAY better care elsewhere and usually for less money too!

This was our son’s first daycare, from before he could crawl til he was walking and climbing.
Kathryn, the center’s director, seems like she was born to run this place. We were impressed that she knew all the kids’ names (it’s a pretty good-​sized daycare center), and she even had her daughter enrolled in daycare with our son. Miss Sydnie was the best teacher at the center. Words can hardly describe how great she was, and how highly we think of her!
We really appreciated the little things: like when they’d randomly send home a photo they took during the day, or some fingerpaint artwork he did, or little gifts for Mother’s Day, etc.
My wife thinks that this place helped our son develop faster than if we had kept him at home with us all the time. Not that there’s any way to prove it, but we were very happy with this place nonetheless. Yes, it is pretty pricey, but it’s equal to or cheaper than all comparable daycares around Mtn View and Palo Alto. Also, you can pay online with your credit card (Discover only), so at least you can get some credit card reward points for the thousands you’ll spend on daycare…
The bottom line was we needed a reliable daycare close to work and home, and this place worked out fantastically!

We have had our daughter at KinderCare Mountain View for almost 2 years. We have had a really great experience in both the infant and toddler classrooms. We drop our daughter off and she is happy and we pick her up and she is still happy-​sometimes she does not want to leave! The teachers are great-​always talking to us about what she is doing in the classroom. We have seen her really come out of her shell in the toddler room as she was a pretty shy baby. We would highly recommend this daycare to our friends with children. As far as I know, they have a really long waitlist for a lot of the classrooms so that tells me a lot!

Great staff– loving, caring and highly professional. The management team is working tirelessly to ensure the safety, care level and curriculum are at the highest standard. We have been there 3 years with 3 kids and are very happy.

I don’t send my kids here but I took the tour today and was thoroughly unimpressed.
They were doing story time in the toddler room which was just the kids sitting in a circle listening to a recording of someone reading while the teacher spaced out and looked hung over. Suddenly another teacher burst out of nowhere and barked «I’m going on break» to no one in particular.
We went outside and the balls were super cracked and flat like they had been baking in the sun for weeks. Real fun for the kids. Then the teacher from earlier came back from her break I guess and started aggressively shouting the Mr. Rogers theme song. Not in a fun way to get the kids singing, she was just being a jerk. You don’t have to love Mr. Rogers but kids do, so shut up with the sarcastic crap in front of them. I’m disgusted that I have to remember her the next time we watch Daniel Tiger. I don’t want either of those two «teachers» watching my kids.

My son used to go to the infant classroom in this center. The teachers are awesome. In particular, Ms Jocelyn is amazing. She is very kind and my son got attached to her in the first two weeks. The center director and the associate director are also the best. Kathryn and Whitney are so sweet and kind. They are both well educated and experienced and they are always helping the teachers in the infant room. I totally recommend this center for your infant child.
One thing to note, do not always rely on Unilocal reviews. Go to the center and see by yourself. The Unilocal reviews for this center are not fair. If you really want to decide, make some time and visit the center. You will not regret it.

My son attended Kindercare for 12 months, starting in the infant room and then transitioning into the toddler room, from 8am to noon every day. He loved it, and so did we – we only left because we had to (we moved out of the area for job reasons). The staff at Kindercare in Mountain View is very professional and nurturing, and Kathryn (the director) is to be commended for running a tight ship. Every day is structured thoughtfully for the kids’ personal growth and fun, the grounds are clean and safe, and the food is healthy and to the kids’ liking. I especially appreciated that half-​days were available. You child will be well cared for here!

My son attended this preschool for about 6 months part time. I wish I had taken him out sooner.
In the first 2 months he was bit 3 times (in the ¾ year old class!). He was bullied especially by the lifer kids. When we brought this to the attention of the teachers they flat out denied it, and basically said the problem was with my son. However they must have thought there was a problem since they notified all the other parents to tell their children to stop bullying behavior! I appreciate honesty, and that’s not what we found here.
Other concerns: very expensive (I think this is the reason they usually have an opening), «creative staffing» I didn’t appreciate the fact they would immediately start sending staff home if the census changed: I paid for the full day, I don’t get a discount if my son leaves early. So why should you short staff to save the center a few dollars? This just sets the children up for a chaotic and potentially dangerous situation. Often the teachers at the end of the day had no idea what had gone all day because of this staff shifting. If I asked how his day was, I would get a response «I’m not sure» or «they said he ate well». Great. I’m glad I paid you $ 100 a day for this insight. The outdoor equipment is old and worn somethings are broken. I could go on, but in conclusion: parents do thorough research before selecting a daycare or preschool.

As all the other moms would do, I did a lot of search to find a good daycare not too far from my daily route between work and home. I visited many places and read all the reviews. And, yes, the bad review of this place made me hesitate. However, I decided to believe my first impression I got during my visit. How glad I am I did!
The new director, Ms. Kathryn Collins, and the assistant director Ms. Marquela, are very friendly and extremely helpful. All the teachers in the infant room are loving and caring so my daughter always seemed very happy to be there.
The toys and blankets are well sanitized, there are a lot of space for the crawlers to explore, the feeding & nap schedule is well recorded,. I can go on and list all the things that a typical mom would care, but rather I would just say that I never had any complaint about this place or the people working here.
Do not let the old reviews make you hesitate. Visit and see for yourself. You will be glad as I was. :)

I signed up my 12 month old son to this daycare in mid summer. It is close to our house, they had availability and it seemed like a professional place. My son was happy and open to Kindercare. Why the low rating? In 4 short months, here was my experience
NEGLECTFUL PLACE! (Weeks 1)
1. I got calls at least every 2 – 3 days about him getting serious injuries such as several busted lips, horrific bruises etc. The staff never know whats going on since no one ever claims to be watching when it happens.
2. BAD MANAGEMENT (Week 2)
It took contacting their corporate office to find out that my child had no teacher assigned to him so he was being passed around. They incorrectly placed him in toddler room when he was too young so he was frequently injured. He wasnt assigned a teacher until week 2.
3. HIGH TURNOVER (end of week 1)
Director quit during the first week we were there. At least one teacher quit and others were moved or disappeared to other rooms without anyone mentioning it to the parents.
4. VISITS FROM LICENSING (2^nd month)
During his second month, one of the teachers reported that someones child received the wrong breastmilk. There were notices on the board about a state investigation.
5. INCORRECT BILLING and FINANCIAL MISTAKES (3^rd month)
When the new director started, I (along with several parents) received incorrect statements where we were overbilled. Trying to get them to issue a real billing statement to dispute the inaccuracies was like pulling teeth. Totally unprofessional and rarely admit their mistakes. TIP: Get *everything* in writing.
6. FRIVOLOUS REPORTING of CHILD ABUSE (4^th month/​last month)
Don’t get on the director”s bad side otherwise they will look for any reason, even false ones to call CPS on you. I made the mistake of asking about my toddlers meal portions because I saw that his bowel movements were becoming inconsistent. The current director (Kathryn) misused information exchanged in an email I gave her to make a false report of child neglect due to ‘underfeeding’ to CPS. Kathryn was the LAST person I would suspect making false allegations, especially since anyone with common sense could look at my child is well taken care of and a bit chunky. This leads to my next point.
7. INSINCERE and FORCED FRIENDLINESS
I did not enjoy communicating with the director because everything about her felt fake. Remember, this woman actually sent CPS to my home while sporting a big counterfeit smile and artificial perkiness. Don’t trust her with your kids, your money or your questons. They are only out to protect themselves and will go to extremes to avoid responsibility for just about everything.
8. STINGY ABOUT FOOD
Breakfast is at 8, lunch at 11:30 and after that its snackville until 6pm. My son loves to eat and they never have enough so I asked them to give him more. The teacher then asked me to provide food for the afternoon because they only have ‘light’ snacks like cheerios. They are responsible for feeding the kids between 7:30am — 6pm and despite the $ 1900 price, you will be asked to bring in food since they dont have enough. Where is the money going?
CONCLUSION
In only 4 months, I personally witnessed a lot of ‘drama’ at this center. The fact that my son had a great connection to his teacher was the main reason I kept him there for this long. However the director does not understand the seriousness of making a false CPS call. I strongly do not recommend this center.