SEED EARLY CHILDHOOD SCHOOL AT TEMPLE BETH AM

Revised review to reflect state investigative findings: Although there are many wonderful teachers remaining at SEED and the school has positive attributes, I want no other parent to go through what my family had to endure at SEED without at least having been forewarned. (1) This place is a revolving door for staff. Teachers routinely quit on short or zero notice. Many years, I routinely dropped off my child with people I'd never met whose names I didn't even know, and picked them up from even more new faces who seemed to come and go week-to-week. In contrast to many other schools, SEED makes near-zero effort to introduce new staff to parents. There is no staff directory, no regular announcements, no newsletter introductions—nothing. (2) In 2023-24, CPS found that some long-time SEED faculty had routinely DRUGGED babies (1-2yo) to sleep using melatonin gummies for years. SEED quickly terminated the implicated teachers in Oct '23; but, SEED's administration subsequently went into "information lockdown" mode, hiding the abuse from families. Actively enrolled families were provided only cryptic, obfuscated information ("We were informed that a teacher… gave melatonin to preschool students while at SEED."). Parents of likely victims who had since left or graduated were intentionally kept in the dark. SEED's initial reasoning for this was ongoing investigations; but, when investigations concluded in Mar '24, SEED pivoted to claim that "HR and legal reasons" precluded informing all families. As many parents of likely victims remain unaware of this abuse, I believe SEED's continued insistence on hiding this abuse actively obstructs justice and protects abusers. (3) When confronted with "challenging behaviors" by preschoolers, SEED's uniform response is to conclude that there is nothing SEED can do except decrease the child's attendance hours (e.g. from full-time to 2-4 hrs/day 3x/week etc.). This approach is clearly wrong—you're supposed to *teach* preschoolers, not suspend them. It severely affects children with neurodivergence, which often manifests with behavioral challenges that respond to simple instructional accommodations that SEED almost never provides. In my experience, no one from SEED leadership ever bothers to provide teachers with mentorship, expertise, or guidance on addressing challenging behaviors; no one consults relevant resources or experts; and, if experts are provided (e.g. the child's clinicians), no one at SEED listens to them. At one point, literally HALF the boys in a single class had been pegged by SEED as "problem children," with parents paying out-of-pocket for an in-classroom consultant who identified numerous instructional deficiencies… and who was ignored. Unfortunately, if you talk to parents of SEED preschoolers (3yos-5yos), you will quickly find that this is a VERY COMMON experience—and, tellingly, that most such kids go onto other environments in which their "challenging behaviors" quickly extinguish with proper, developmentally-appropriate instruction. Ultimately, all of these issues share a common thread: that SEED's teachers are poorly supported, poorly mentored, and poorly supervised by an administration that simply lacks the qualifications, capacity, commitment, or moral fiber necessary to lead an early childhood school. As a result, SEED's teachers are largely left adrift to fend for themselves when faced with challenges, and the children suffer as a result. Until leadership changes, I would strongly urge prospective parents to identify alternative options for their child. Unfortunately, disenrolling your child in the middle of their preschool journey (particularly once they're past 3yo or so) can be profoundly disruptive to their socialization and attachments; but, at SEED, the likelihood of having a "bad year" with poorly-qualified teachers, then having to fall back onto an uninvolved and incapable administration that routinely blames all manner of problems on children, is high enough that it is simply far better to start your child's early educational journey elsewhere.

My son goes to daycare here- we love his teachers and classroom! They do different activities each day and he seems to really enjoy it.

Sending my kid to the day care here, not impressed at all.