Daycare charges for "extra curricular" activities

[Anonymous]

Our child is in a full day daycare center. The centers hours are from 7:30am to 6:30pm. We were recently asked to pay an additional fee for an extra-curricular activity that will be held during regular center hours. Participation is "voluntary" but if we don't fork over the money our child will be sent to a class for younger children for the half hour that his other classmates are participating in the extra-curricular activity. Is it typical to charge additional fees for something that is held during the regular day? Shouldn't our regular (fairly hefty) weekly fee cover such activites?

Thanks

[Anonymous]

Is this by any chance TCCC? That place has so many hidden fees it's ridiculous. Regardless, I do think what you are talking about is annoying. I hate that they do it at all, but at the very least your child should be able to stay in his regular room/program if he doesn't participate in the extra stuff. And you should make it very clear that you hope he will not in any way be made to feel left out either.

[Anonymous]

The daycare we're interested in does this for things like art, dance, and foreign language. I don't know if they send kids to a different room, though.

[Anonymous]

Our daycare does this. We pay extra for Power Tots and a music class. I am not thrilled about the extra fees, but the classes are much less expensive than any similar weekend classes that I've looked into. My DD enjoys them, so we continue to enroll her in the classes.

[Anonymous]

Have you acyually seen the "extra curricular" activities that these centers do? Power tots is a joke-any daycare should be able to do what they do. It is basically just movement. And why is music extra? All teachers should be having music in their class on a daily basis. BH pulls this crap on parents and it is crazy.

[Anonymous]

Capital Kids does this too. Read the contract very closely. We were amazed that the Power Tots contract was something like 8 pages and that it takes some effort to get out of the classes once signed up. We opted not to sign our son up and either they let him participate anyway or he just changed rooms for a while and thought that was exciting. No biggie at all.

[Anonymous]

Our preschool does this and I'm ok with it although I refuse to pay the martial arts fee classes which are triple the cost or a regular martial arts class. I'd rather have the main teachers focus on social skills, motor skills, and academics rather than music and martial arts. Some schools don't even bother with the extracurriculars which is really sad when your kid has nowhere else to go during the day to learn these things.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our daycare does this. We pay extra for Power Tots and a music class. I am not thrilled about the extra fees, but the classes are much less expensive than any similar weekend classes that I've looked into. My DD enjoys them, so we continue to enroll her in the classes.

same here. both are pretty cheap.

[Anonymous]

If your child is in a full day daycare then there is plenty of time during the day for the providers to have movement, music, and all of other areas od development. Martial arts? No way.

[Anonymous]

My daycare does this in the summer, when they bring in performers once a week for the summer camp kids. I actually don't remember what they do if you opt out - probably just go to the playground longer. It was $40ish for the summer, so while I'd rather they just include this in tuition I didn't mind much.

[Anonymous]

My daycare does this for a few things. The rule seems to be is that if they have someone in-house to do it, it's free. So Spanish and Chinese are free, and they all do it in the older kids rooms. If they have to bring someone in from the outside, you pay, like ballet.

They once asked me if I wanted to sign my son up for the computer class, because they did a demo class and he really loved it. I told them I sent him to school to get him off the computer, so no. They never approached me about ones I know he wouldn't care for, so it wasn't a hard sell to get revenue.

[Anonymous]

Our DD's preschool offers extracurriculars that we can pay for if we so choose. Movement, Spanish, computer and soccer. They are essentially pull-outs. They use one of the empty classrooms when that class is on the playground.

Most of them run from 3-4pm which is after the regular curriculum day ends and is during the freeplay timeframe so DD isn't missing anything in her regular class.

[Anonymous]

Our preschool in Bethesda does this, too, and I used to think it was annoying but now that our DC is three I think of it as a good enrichment opportunity as I don't have to drive DC to/from an activity. That said, I heard that not a single kid in our class was paying for a movement class although there were participants from other classes. We did pay for a sports thing but I was unhappy to hear that because there were so few people in her age group who signed up that she was mixed in with the younger kids. So, OP, I guess your kid got stuck with the younger kids because you didn't sign up and in our case this happened because we did sign up.

[Anonymous]

I am a teacher. The last 2 schools I taught at did this. But the extra cost is for really good activities (IMO.)

[Anonymous]

22:14 Maybe there is time for it, but the afternoon teachers aren't usually paid much and don't often have the skills to teach music, art, sports, etc. The cost of care in the afternoon is cheaper at most full day preschools so I don't mind paying a little bit extra a couple of times a week for enrichment activities. We toured 5 preschools that had NO music, art, or movement program for the kids. Some of these kids do now struggle with music, art, and sports in elementary, especially the boys. The boys dropped out of sports at an early age.