Montessori School of Marion 420 Colton Circle Northeast, Cedar Rapids, IA 52402

"First, I want to provide all the positives since I actually did love that my daughter attended this school. The Nido staff is absolutely wonderful. 5 stars. They provided such great care for my daughter and you can just tell they enjoyed working with her. My daughter was thriving there. The facility is also nice. It's very clean and they just moved into the building in 2021. Also 5 stars. I haven't worked much with any of the other teachers so I can't review them. Our daughter started here in January 2021. Unfortunately, I did not have a good experience working with the owner/director, Aurora. Normally you wouldn't think that would really matter if the owner/director doesn't communicate well and if you have a child in a different classroom altogether. You wouldn't expect to interact much; however, it's in the handbook that you bring up concerns directly to her. I would personally recommend working with the Nido staff instead after my experiences here. The Parent Handbook for this school also states ‘We will make every effort to rectify a problematic situation and will provide you with feedback as soon as possible. If deemed necessary, the director will include any other involved parties in order to settle your concern. If you are not satisfied with how the problem has been resolved, we encourage you to put your concerns in writing so we can meet as a group and address the situation thoroughly.’ This was not the case for us. We should have been given this opportunity. On 8/1/2021 we saw pictures of our 16 month old daughter off of the school grounds. We were surprised, to say the least, since we had filled out paperwork requesting that our daughter should not be taken on field trips and there was nothing in the parent handbook that talked about taking the babies off school property. We sent an email to the owner/director on 8/2/2021 with our concerns for our daughter. Since she’s so young and can’t communicate with us yet it’s so important that we know where our daughter is at all times especially when taken off school property without our knowledge. We were not given an opportunity to meet as a group to address the situation as stated in the handbook. Instead on 8/5/2021, our daughter was dismissed from this school via email. We were told that walks are permitted ‘according to MSM guidelines’; however, walks were not detailed nor were they mentioned in any way in the version of the parent handbook when we enrolled our daughter. We were also told, after inquiring about details on these walks, that parking lots were avoided; however, the post of a picture of children (including our daughter) in a stroller in the middle of a coffee shop drive thru during business hours says otherwise. After our daughter had been terminated from the school, I noticed on 8/13/2021 a note about the walks had been added to the parent handbook. There was one instance prior to this one where we had a difference of opinion over email and we were given the opportunity to speak in person and resolve the issue as a team. Given the gravity of the situation in this circumstance, that should have been the case in this instance as well."