First Step Early Childhood Education Center

This is a great place for kids to learn from teachers, develop social skills, and grow in a safe and nurturing environment

Our daughter has learned so much from her teachers at First Step. We love that they have earned the highest ratings (NAEYC/Parent Aware) but it feels like a family.

This review is for their location in Univ Ave (3036 University Ave.). We recently moved back to Minnesota, and were in desperate need for a daycare center for our toddler boy. First Step caught our attention, partly due to its location being convenient to us and the fact that they did get a 4-star parent award. Our son was attending daycare in a different state prior to this and had no issues. However, for the 4 days he were there, he basically cried all the time, and did not nap much either. He is a sweet and calm boy who almost never cries, so that really makes us doubt about whether efforts were made to try to comfort/distract him. Things we observed during drop-off/pick up also made us concerned. The teachers seemed tired and did not really engage the kids much when we were there. The first morning we were there, one little girl was left to cry alone, one teacher just causally said she has too much fun over the weekend. No one was trying to comfort her at all. The other morning this same teacher was walking around eating a donut, and offered a chunk from the donut she was biting to one of the kids... And when another kid came in later, she told her that she has another donut for her. I hope the parents of these two kids are ok with their kids eating donuts, but probably not sharing one with the teacher... The other teacher was quite nice, but dealing with that many kids in a small space is tough, we understand that. We decided to take him out of this daycare right away. However, the center is still holding part of our tuition refund. We paid for 5 weeks upfront, instead of paying weekly, as we did not imagine this would not work out for us. We have been trying to contact the manager, childcare director and FamilyWise director since the end of January, and the issue still remains unresolved. Our messages have been completely ignored for the last month. Our little one is now thriving at a different daycare and really enjoying his time there. Stay away from this daycare if you have any other options possible.