Home-School Connection

OVERALL RATING (4.0)

Conducts an open house at start of school year

Conducts a parent-teacher meeting at start of school year

Conducts regular parent teacher conferences

Provides summary of child’s learning at end of year

Provides guidance on developmental goals for the following year

Provides guidance on best Kindergarten and elementary schools

Separation

OVERALL RATING (4.8)

Director's and Parents' Comments

Parent #1
This is a wonderfully welcoming school, especially to children with special needs. The staff is genuinely caring, and takes personal interest in each of the children - that means a lot to me. Each teacher knows my son's developmental goals and works on them daily.

My son gets to participate in all the traditional preschool activities (art, music, play, etc.), but they respect his pace, and give him whatever extra support he needs.

Parent #2
ABT provides weekly program curriculum/activity overviews that summarize activities that focus on the major developmental areas, and individual daily "my day" notes on the child's activities, accomplishments, or challenges each day. There is not a lot of structured communication about a child's overall or long-term social development or learning; communication is primarily in the context of the pickup/dropoff conversations, when it's not too busy, and the "my day" note.

Discipline

OVERALL RATING (5.0)
Parents' Opinions
Parents at this school, on average, believe that conflicts between children: are handled extraordinarily well in a way that not only gives me confidence in the safety of my child but also reassures me that my child (and his/her peers) are learning the early skills needed to socialize effectively with one another

Parents' Notes on Discipline, Health and Safety

Parent #1
The school is located in the basement of a church. The church has provided a restroom just for the school. It is in emaculate condition, always cleans and with plenty of supplies. The outside play equipment is very enjoying and spacy. There is tons of room inside since there are two seperate rooms with different stations/ areas for children to roam around in.

Parent #2
Shortly after our son began with ABT in mid-2007 the program experienced a series of staff changes, for a variety of personal and professional reasons, which caused us to monitor the program's "fit" with our needs, values, and style more closely. I am pleased to say that our son continues to thrive at ABT, and the program handled the multiple transitions with sensitivity to both the children's and their parents needs. Things have stabilized more recently and the program seems to be hitting its stride as the staff and the program find their niche. The biggest "pluses" we find with ABT are the low staff-to-child ratio (1:4), which helps the staff to form a personal relationship with our child, and the integration of medically fragile children in the program, which has encouraged our "typically developing" son's empathy and appreciation for people's differences. Historically, there are frequently foreign preschoolers in the program, primarily as a result of the proximity to the UC Berkeley campus (convenient to visiting scholar families), which brings further diversity to the program. Our son is counting in multiple languages (english, spanish, norwegian, farsi/persian, german,...)and learns his alphabet in english, braille, and sign language. The pace of our son's development and his excitement at "going to school" (he *runs* into the school each day) are our best evidence that this is a successful preschool program. The primary disadvantage of ABT from our perspective is really an aspect of the location rather than the program itself -- ABT is located on the site of an old elementary school, so the playground is not toddler-oriented. The program has created a safe, enclosed outside play area, but it is not as rich an outside environment for "free play" as you might find in other preschool settings.

Parent #3
I think the health of the children to be most important especailly since they have a few children with extra needs. they are very clean and sanitary, I always see the puzzles drying out from being washed the day before witch I really appricate as a parent

Parent #4
The day care is housed in a Berkeley Unified School District building. There are limitations on what ABT can do to the site.

Extended Care

Notes on Schedule and Extended Care

Notes

20 hrs or less per week: $500/month
20-30 hours per week: $750/month
40+ hours per week: $1000/month

Open from 8:00 a.m. - 6:30 p.m. with optional drop-off time as early as 7:30 a.m. The hours parents pay for are flexible within this time frame.

We are licensed for up to 15 children in preschool and K-5th grade program -- total of 30.

From interview with director 3/15/06

Application Process

Admissions Process

Savvy Source's Comments

No waitlist currently for pre-school program, but there is for our K-5th grade program that starts May of 2006.