In our quest to find a good daycare/preschool for our first child, San Marino Montessori was recommended to us by a mom that was at WCC with us. Now, this mom was CLASSY with C (and not a K), had really nice outfits for her baby girl, and drove a really expensive and nice new premium SUV. This is all I knew of this lady but she seemed so put together that I took this recommendation very seriously.
After taking the tour, I would never ever recommend San Marino Montessori to anyone.
The one major pro that I can tell you about San Marino Montessori is that it is cheap for Pasadena. I went on a tour, and at first glance everything seemed okay not great. Just adequate, but for the price, adequate is great. It's not a real Montessori, if you know what that means. The teachers don't come from whatever the two main Montessori organizations are. It's more of a "Montessori light" kind of place, which I actually didn't mind. They have the Montessori equipment, and the director seemed very earnest about the facility, which is always great. The class ratios were on the high side (like at the regulated minimum number of teachers per maximum number of students allowed).
But what turned me off on the place is that after the tour, on the way out of the facility, a teacher had lined a bunch of 3 year olds up against the wall and was yelling at them for not behaving. They were coming back in from recess (I had seen them on the playground during the tour) and I guess some were messing around in line. The way the teacher was yelling at them brought tears to my eyes, and I thought it completely developmentally inappropriate to discipline 3 year olds in this way. I later researched the facility online and found that another parent had brought San Marino Montessori to small claims, suing for money not returned to them after the facility asked the family to leave. To this day, we hear of other families having their child at San Marino Montessori and hating it, so it's buyer beware for this facility.
