Children's Leadership Academy

Reviews

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  **WARNING*** If you doubt this school's owner at all, look below and note that both owners and the school all gave themselves 5 star reviews!!! Our son began going to Children’s Leadership Academy (CLA) in July 2015. Our son has special needs and we chose CLA in particular because they had staff with training and experience with special-needs children. Within a few months my son’s lead teacher, the one with experience, had left the company. Her position did not seem to have been filled, and instead staff was rearranged. Another staff member was let go, and her position was not replaced for quite a while, again with the remaining staff shifting around as needed. Prior to the one employee being let go, I had to make several complaints regarding her attitude toward the children, including my own, and her inability to properly change my son’s diaper without leaving behind… a lot of stuff. In early 2016 the day-to-day ownership involvement changed, and within a few weeks of that I was asked to speak to the owner, who asked us to find another place due to my son hitting other children. I will admit that my son had been having a harder time keeping his hands to himself over the 4-5 days prior, and I am not discounting the fact that he shouldn’t be doing this. I do know that the day before we were “fired,” he did hit the owner’s son, and that the day we were asked to go, an example was brought up that my son had hit another child with a stick on the playground – a stick that he should not have been able to access. We were given no warning, there were no discussions on coming up with solutions, there was nothing other than (on a Wednesday) “we’d like this to be his last week, but we will give you until the end of next week if we need to,” with the last part being offered fairly reluctantly. My son does not do this at school, and the lack of structure in the preceding weeks seemed to have taken their toll. He can’t speak for himself, or in his own defense, and the accommodations he needed may not have sat well with the owner – who knows? But it made me sick to think of him there for the 2 subsequent days, knowing he wasn’t wanted there. CLA staff is very nice, and the director was great. The teachers seemed to enjoy the kids, and the buildings and rooms were clean and well-maintained. I think that a child who needs no added help or accommodations would be well cared-for, but many children do not fit into a neat little box, and CLA is not for those children.
  By Jason Kozlowski, October 14, 2017

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