Late Pickup Late Fee?
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Anonymous
| Anyone have experience with late pickup fees at your small, private preschool? Ours is contemplating introducing a fee because they say there are a few families who are chronically late. And it disrupts theie staffing schedule that the people in charge don't get to go home until these kids get picked up. I totally agree - you don't call to say you are running late, why should the staff have to wait around for you? It's one thing, once in a while, but chronic lateness seems like it's a personal problem. Anyway, my question is, what fees are people being charged? And how is it enforced - you pick up your kid late and the staff person tells you how much your bill will be? Is there some clock that everyone can see so you know you are late? And does a bill just come your way? Any feedback would be much appreciated. |
Anonymous
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Our daycare charges $10 per 15 minutes you are late. The fee goes directly to the teacher you are holding up. Though cash at the time is expected, if you do not pay right then and there, they will add it to your monthly invoice.
I am not sure about enforcement as I have never been late. |
Anonymous
| Our preschool charged $1 per minute, also directly payable to the teacher that stays. I only had to pay once (I had called and I was stuck in traffic). After that I switched my hours by 30 minutes to allow for a larger buffer. |
Anonymous
| My current one doesn't charge anything. But my last one charged $35 per kid for each ten minutes late. So, at minute 1, you got hit for $35 per kid, at minute 11, you were up to $70 per kid. Thing is that the staff had discretion to apply it and I hear they never did. I've only ever been late once in all my years as a parent and the fee was waived. |
Anonymous
| Ours is $1 per minute but isn't implemented until the parent is late for the third time. |
Anonymous
|
I'm surprised your preschool doesn't do this already. I've never heard of one, at least in our area (Bethesda), that doesn't charge.
Ours is also $1 per minute and we've paid maybe 3-4 times over a year. Payable directly to the teacher. We usually round up to the nearest $10 increment. We also usually double what we are required to pay because we have two children at the preschool and they are kind of a handful. One of my friends who is at another small private preschool down the road from us runs late a lot and they charge the same, too. She has a really unpredictable job and works in DC so she's late by a lot -maybe 3-4 times a month- but she has an informal arrangement with the afternoon teachers in that she calls ahead when she knows this will happen and they make arrangements to stay late. She has been an hour late a few times so she had to shell out $60+ for the hour. But she swears it's better than getting a nanny to pick up every day and that the teachers love the chance to make a quick $60. |
Anonymous
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I'm PP and forgot to answer the question about enforcement. At our school and my friend's school there's no real enforcement as far as we can tell. In fact, I once didn't have any cash on me and the teacher just told me not to worry about it. I did pay her the next day.
At a third nearby school that a lot of my neighbors attend, I saw invoices in the office for late fees which are added to the monthly bill. Sorry I don't remember what the fees are at this school. I was there with a friend picking up her kids one day and remember being struck by how many there were. It's not a big school (maybe 40 kids total) and there must have been at least 12 invoices for the month. So at this school it looks like the teachers are required to fill out the exact sign out time. |
Anonymous
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Ours has a fee of $2 per minute for the first 10 minutes, then $3 per minute after that. If you are an hour late (even if you call), the policy is that they take your child to the police station.
There is a clock on the wall above sign-in/sign-out. We've been late maybe 3 times ever and only once paid a small fee (maybe $5-6 total). I am very friendly with the staff so they cut us slack on the other two. Also, I made friends with the parents of my daughter's classmates. In a pinch, we pickup each other's kids just to avoid triggering a late fee. |
Anonymous
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Our preschool charges $1 per minute after 6:00. That seems fair to me. (Our old daycare had the same policy.)
I was late once by 10-15 minutes because there was an attempted suicide on the orange line and the bus I ended up riding took FOREVER to get me there in heavy traffic. It was the one and only time we've been late and they did not charge us. I think that was partly because I called them in advance, apologized profusely, and don't have a history of being late with pickups or payment. |
Anonymous
| OP here. Thanks so much for the feedback. I sent it along to the director of the school. It's a super small school and I don't think she wants to do this, but it's gotten too difficult for her to manage and a few people are chronically taking advantage. Now that she sees this is normal for schools in our area, she is probably going to be incorporating the rule for next year. Thanks again. |
Anonymous
| $1 per minute late for the first 15 minutes. $5 per minute late from 16-45 minutes. Minute 46 is when they call CPS. |