Kindercare Employee Review

Former Employee – worked at Kindercare full-time for more than 10 years

Pros – PRIOR to the change from education to basic retail, I loved KC! There were: Smiles and hugs daily! The building of relationships with amazing families, earning their trust. Leading and coaching eager teachers. Recognition for outstanding customer care, parent reviews, health and safety, growth, etc. The NEW KC lacks all of those attributes.

Cons – Education is very back-burner, revenue generation is the only goal. NO pay raises for staff or mgmt in 4+ years, yet tuition increased annually. Micro-management over everything! Centers are pressured to reduce labor costs which displaces children btwn classrooms and severely reduces curriculum that parents are paying dearly for. Families are highly pressured to pay extra for tutorial "learning adventures" that in many cases don't get taught due to staff shortages. The topics of the tutorials should be part of the main-stream curriculum as they are with competitive centers. Centers are dirty as cleaning budgets are gone, older buildings are in poor repair while newer buildings get repainted, hardwood flooring, new classroom equipment.

Advice to Senior Management – KC has become 100% revenue driven! District managers and up have NO EDUCATION BACKGROUND (only retail) and are unable to understand that the early childhood education and childcare centers operate very differently than Target! Someone calls in sick at a store, they close a register and people have to wait to check out. At a center when someone calls in sick, the center goes out of teacher/child state mandated ratios! Safety is compromised, curriculum is dropped, Directors are in kitchens making lunches, doing bus runs, filling in classrooms. There is never any money budgeted for additional staff!! District Managers and RVPs show extreme favoritism to "puppets" and eventually replace any Director that has a strong business sense as well as strong convictions to child welfare, family satisfaction, health and safety, state mandated standards! Professionalism and leadership are no longer virtues. It is a sad day when trust is lost and replaced by greed. Take note of the decrease in occupancy in your centers...it didn't have to be that way!

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company