I'm sorry, OP. This sounds awful. I think your plan sounds great. I would not be afraid to be forceful (but still calm and polite). If they are not providing care within the required ratios they are not holding up their end of the contract, so they should absolutely not be able to keep your deposit. It's bad enough that you are now left scrambling to find childcare.

FWIW, we have been at our center for 18 months and I have seen them be out of ratio exactly once. I waited around and within 5 minutes a "floater" teacher had arrived. That night the center director called me (b/c I guess she'd heard I had seen it--I didn't complain or anything). She was extremely apologetic and told me that the other teacher had become ill and had to leave the room abruptly. What you have described is 100% unacceptable. Once you are out of the center I would report it to the state AND post the name of the center on here. They obviously aren't taking your complaints seriously and you don't want other families to be put in the same position.

Yikes, I can't imagine trying to care for 5 infants on my own. 1:5 is awful.

For 21:40, no. They are licensed and we will call it in once we are past the situation, but are not comfortable doing it in the midst of the conversations (though yes, I know we should!) They have been cited in the past for this but it was a number of years ago and we thought it had been addressed based on talking to parents, observing, etc.

Current plan, after sitting on this for the weekend, is to have DS finish at least the month of May, but to have a conversation with the director tomorrow to let her know in no uncertain terms that this is unacceptable and if it continues, we will consider that an indication that there is not room for our child, and will find alternate care and expect our deposit refunded accordingly. We will also not leave DC if the room is out of ratio when we arrive, or if adding him would push it out of ratio. (Not going to be fun if it comes to this but we decided we could juggle schedules sufficiently to make this work if need be.)

I'm really not sure how much to involve the teachers in his room in this conversation--on the one hand, they should not leave if it puts the room out of ratio, but on the other, I don't think it should be their responsibility to, say, find someone to cover if they are ill, or to miss their breaks because no one is sent to relieve them. I see that as the director's responsibility. We also like the teachers so I'm quite torn. Similarly, the center is overseen by a board, and not sure when the appropriate time to involve them is (certainly if we withdraw so that it is clear why, but possibly before then...?)

Per our contract, the earliest we could leave and have our deposit refunded is the end of July. I do think we have a strong argument that if they are consistently understaffed, they are not meeting their end of the contract (to provide a space for him) but I'm not at all sure how to go about documenting that. In the interim, we're looking for alternate care, and if we find something that feels right we will leave at that point independent of the deposit. I'm just feeling really sick about the search right now since we thought this place was the best of what we looked at, and obviously we are not great judges of such things. The deposit is a lot so it will be a challenge for us to eat this financially while starting a new care arrangement...we will do it if we have to, but would like to find an alternative given that we don't think we are at fault here.

Would love any thoughts/feedback on this approach and what, if anything, we might do differently. (Or, alternatively, if this is egregious enough that we should just leave immediately.)

is this bright start?

I'd also report them to the state...if they are licensed.

Thanks for the BH rec, PP---that's one option we're considering (a different BH center) though unclear what the wait would be.

For notice, we have to give 60 days so unless we stick it out till July we may be out of luck. I'm tempted to go and make an issue of it (partly so they realize it *is* a big deal, and so the board knows what's happening)---and maybe if they really aren't willing to address it and ask us to leave, they'll have to refund the deposit. Thank goodness I remembered to make a copy of the contract!!

Our daycare (one of the federal facility Bright Horizon centers in MD) religiously adheres to the state 3:1 ratio. If they see one of the children coming down the hall and a teacher is absent, they will call the office for another person to come down. The director and the office manager will often go and help out fulfill ratios. If there is only one extra (4 infants), then they will sometimes move a child from one room to another to meet ratios. There are now 2 infant rooms, 1 in between (about 12-16 month) and 2 toddler rooms. Between these five rooms, they make sure to meet state ratios or the director or office manager will fill in.

In the 5.5 months our kids have been there, I've never seen them out of ratio for more than about 2-3 minutes until someone else comes down. This often happens at drop off and usually one of us parents will stay in the room until the substitute teacher comes in. The teachers in all 5 infant/toddler rooms have made a concerted effort to go out of their way to meet all parents in each room and introduce themselves so that if we come to pickup and find our child in an alternate room, that we know the teachers there. We love our center.

With the requisite notice, you should get your deposit back. Our first center was 30 days I think. Sorry OP. I certainly know what a stressful situation it is to find childcare.

Sorry, "good"

Wow, I don't blame your DH. The director of this daycare is clearly out of line. You would think that after your conversation that the director would have made a change in staff but she clearly didn't. Take this for what it is, a daycare that is blatently breaking the law. See if you can call licensing and make a case to get your money back. Did you take notes? You will need them for evidence. Dood luck and do what you can to get your child another daycare.

...and yet another update. When I returned to get DC at the end of the day, the room was *still* down one teacher with no indication that this had changed since drop-off (so a 1:5 ratio the whole day, it seems--I have no idea if the teachers who were there got their breaks or not, or how that was handled if so).

DH is very angry and wants to pull DC out immediately. I think this may be a little rash since we're scrambling for backup care, but at the same time am incredibly frustrated by how today went. Argh.

OP again. Thanks--we did sit down with the director this morning. Unfortunately, we didn't get any resolution--just a lot of defensiveness and insistence that this "almost never" happens (although we were able to note 10 times that the room has been slightly out of ratio while we've been there in the past month, and another two when it was extremely out of ratio--one caregiver with all of the babies). We left with an agreement that she would watch the room more carefully, but at the same time, the room was out of ratio when we dropped our child off this morning and remained that way during and immediately following our conversation with her about this with no clear plan in place to remedy it...ack. So, we'll see. In the interim we are re-launching our child care search so that we have another option if we need to pull our child out.

For those who have BTDT, in this type of a situation should we expect to get our deposit back, or are we SOL on that front?