Preschool Review: Pasadena City College Child Development Center

So in my previous post, I mentioned that I did not want my child continuing at WCC to the next classroom. This sparked a furious campaign of looking for another option for him.  Pasadena City College Child Development Center was the first that I toured. 

The first tour that I did was of the Pasadena City College Child Development Center.  The biggest positive on paper for me when I first found it online was that part time was a straight proration - say you are only doing two days out of five - you'd only be paying 40% of the full tuition.  Other places stack the tuition structure to discourage part-time enrollment.  The second major plus: the waitlist application is free.  At the time it also made it the cheapest of all the options we had for daycare.  It was also the first and only NAEYC accredited institution that I had toured.

I signed up for the tour and was a little put off by the "please don't bring your child to the tour" direction I received over the phone.  I remember at the start of the tour being really put off by all the levels of security at the Center.  Parents were signing their child in and out by computer, and there was an electronic security code to enter the main doors.  Then there were doors on top of doors to get into each classroom.  My initial first impression was that it felt like a minimum security prison for babies.  Once we were in the Younger Toddler room, though, I was instantly sold.  The room looked so clean, new, and fresh.  There were tiny little sinks for the children, complete with motion sensors, and tiny little toilets.  And there was so much space for them to play.  We got to meet the Twos room specialist, and I knew I wanted her for my child.  No, I NEEDED her for my child.  She talked of toilet learning and what they did not encourage and support toilet learning, and it was so different from the attitude of WCC that I couldn't imagine anything better than what PCC CDC did to initiate, support, and reinforce potty training.  By the time I got to preschool I didn't even care what that looked like -- I so wanted the first rooms for my child.  The whole center is a lab school for PCC's Child Development majors, so all classrooms utilize best practices in early education.

Besides the beautifully kept up classrooms and teachers that utilized best practices, the biggest positive to PCC CDC are the child-caregiver ratio.  They have better than state minimums, and they do not count the student-teachers in the classroom as part of the ratio.  Which means that even though a classroom says they have a 4 to 1 ratio, they may have more adults in there in a caregiver capacity that are not counted towards the ratio - playing with the kids, helping the teachers, and they themselves learning from the children.