I highly recommend ELA School I have had two children go to ELA one currently moved on to elementary school and one currently still attending.



My daughter after moving forward from ELA was tested into her elementary school reading and writing one grade above her level and my son is currently on the same track. Both my children love the school and the staff so much that they would fight me to let them go to school if I kept them home sick and even wished they could attend on weekends.



The owners are very nice and always available to take any questions we may have they are always on top of the latest technology staying one step ahead of the others and some of the kindest people you will come across.



The teaching staff are very nice very attentive to the children they treat the children like their own they are always interacting with the parents updating them on what they did in the days class if they had any struggles with a certain area they will let you know what it was and also what they will be doing to help your child improve. I was so impressed at how they structure each class to each individual child's need and that is why I enrolled my second child to attend this great school.



They have a great camera system installed that you can click into via their website http://www.elasacademy.com/ if you want to see how your child is doing during the day this was a real plus for me as being a busy working Mom it was always nice to sit down on my lunch break and check in to see how they were doing and watch them for a while, it kind of takes away a little of the guilt you feel when you work so many hours and feel as though you don't get to see them as much as you would like. Every time I log in I always see my children happy and enjoying their day and the teachers always happily working.



I am very close with a lot of the mother's who children attend the school also we meet once a month for lunch and play dates and have never heard any one speak anything but high praise for the school they are all very happy with the day to day running of the school, the communication they receive as well as how much their children are learning.



If anyone ever had a problem you would hear about it the community is very close we all talk to each other and I have had children at the school from day one of opening and have never heard of any problems that would directly effect any of the children at the school. the school is also very safe and secure.



I recommend anyone who is looking to enroll to go to the school meet the owners meet the teachers take a tour ask questions and see for yourself you will not be disappointed and from a busy working mom I can assure you your children are in great care.

We recently put our toddler into ELA and have actually been quite thrilled. He loves it there. The teachers are incredibly nice and caring. He has been learning and developing quite rapidly. The security is great. We get nice weekly reports. I like very much that they have lunches you can purchase, which has really helped us out. I can't say that I've experienced issues, and have met both the owner and the owner's husband (who was helping out at the front desk one afternoon and handing out stickers to the kids as they left).

Our son has had a couple of small accidents - one he got bit and another time he bumped into a table. Both times we received detailed written reports within the hour.

My little one is so excited every day to go to ELA. He grabs his little coat and bag and runs merrily down the hall. He doesn't even say goodbye once he arrives anymore.

I haven't had to try and deal with financial problems, but our last place was such a nightmare regarding that, so I imagine they all are quite strict about their financial policies.

Maybe I'm just more easy-going, but compared to our last place which seemed like a prison yard for small children, ELA is a dream. For those of us who can't wait on a two year list for River School, I would certainly recommend them.

I took a tour of ELA when I was pregnant with our first baby. The first thing the owner talked about during the tour was how her family has started so many different businesses. It rubbed me the wrong way from the start and I could see how it was a business and was not being run because they truly cared about the kids.

I would stay away from ELA.

If you are looking to stay in the VVP and or Paulus Hook neighborhood try:

Hudson Montessori
http://hudsonmontessori.net/

Or

Little Harbor Academy
http://www.littleharboracademy.org/

I'm looking for preschool for my 2 years old right now and we live right around the corner from this preschool.

I've been trying to look for the review you posted...it's not anywhere on Google!? Is this a true incident? When did it
happen!??? They are not even listed on Google...please help.
This makes me really worried

Here is a review of Early Learning Academy (ELA) in downtown JC that can be found on google. Definitely worth a read if you are considering this day care.

The class my daughter was in had very few toys for the children, so few in fact that my family decided to donate tons of toys to make sure my daughter had enough to play with. But even after our donation, the toys were not kept out accessible to the children. The teacher stored them in cabinets and up high so that the children could not take them out when they wanted to.

I saw no consistency with this school. They said that they would take the kids to the potty in groups but then let my daughter alone with a teacher that would yell at her on the potty.

I was never told when my child was leaving the school on a walking trip. After I said I would NOT give my child permission to walk to the park, the director asked my husband to sign the permission slip (perhaps so that they would not have to make anyone stay behind with my daughter). The school had no respect for my wishes to not let my daughter cross busy intersections to get to a park.

The school's outdoor area has no shade and no playground and no toys. They took the children out in the heat even during the hottest weeks. They would regularly take the children out when the UV rays are most harmful instead of first thing in the morning. Administration said this was to make sure the afternoon-only children get to go outside.

I would send my daughter with a variety of foods to choose from during lunch, but the teacher would always send home the fruit. They seemed to always offer her the easiest foods and failed to push the fruit.

I did not get consistent incident/accident reports. We did not get phone calls home when our daughter was absent. The school did not ask for a dr's note upon return to school nor did they even ask if she was sick or what she had to be able to determine if she should be coming back to school.

Once when my daughter came home with food and snot smeared all over her face and caked on to indicate that her face had not been washed all day making her look more like an animal than a child the director basically told me I was over reacting.

The aides do care about the children but The owner and director are cold, money hungry, and incompetant. Their poor management has a negative impact on the classroom. The policies in place while we were there were careless, haphazad and inadequate. There was not enough structure there to keep my child safe. They do not use the fingerprint machine consistently.

Most appalling was that my daughter's teacher picked her up over her shoulder and dropped her on her head on a concrete sidewalk and never called us or let us know in anyway that this had happened. We were notified by another party not affiliated with the school.

I have seen a videotape of the incident and it is horrific. The teacher berates my daughter for crying when it was time to go back inside from the outdoor play area. She tells my daughter that if she does not hold onto the rope then she will leave my daughter there to be kidnapped, chopped into little pieces, or taken by pedophiles. We pulled my daughter out right away. The school kept our August tuition even though we pulled her out on August 4th. They also kept our 2011-2012 registration fees and deposit and have refused to deal with us in anyway. For months I have had to bring my child to a child psychologist and an art therapist to deal with the what they did to my two-year old. They have never offered to pay for the dr's bills or showed that they care abot what they did to my family.
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