Day Care Drama

[sararl07]

WTF DayCare....



So I get a VERY detailed email from Daycare today informing me that they fired the office manager (who was only there for 10 weeks). Their side of the story is that wanted a raise and then started using company resources to look for another job when confronted he threated to choke the owner. Cops were called but he left before they got there



Then a few hours later I receive a mass email from the employee who got fired (1st why does he have my email....2nd what other info does he have of ours) saying he is pressing charges against the owner and that he was held without his will and his life threatened. Then he proceeded to tell current employees if they have issues there is another "beautiful and wonderful" daycare that is hiring.





Then I get another email from DC apologizing for his mass email and saying there laywers are now envolved and the police will be patroling and if interested they would be more than happy to answer questions or give us a police case number.





WTF Happened?!!!!



_I feel like if ask them we will only get the owners side of the story...but the fired employee implied that there might be some iffy practices.   I really like the staff that is actually watching dd (they have been there for years) but since we first looked at the dc (last year) they have had 5 people leave in management (front office, education director....) What is going on!  This is an award winning daycare and I'm paying more for this location because it felt safe and I went with my gut....but This is stressing me out and I already have enough on my plate. My husband and I are talking tonight about it and discuss course of action....Mamas what would you do?

I will copy and paste below the emails I've received from oldest to newest.

[sararl07]

Dear Parents,

It is not often when we as owners of the Kids R Kids school have to send a mass apology e-mail to parents. We are ashamed that we hired Paul. We hired Paul in early December as an Office Manager to replace the office manager position that Emily Williams vacated in November. During the course of his short tenure with Kids R Kids, we observed that Paul spent a good bit of time on personal phone calls and attending to his private affairs. He was also actively seeking employment elsewhere and was busy using the school's infrastructure to send out mass e-mails to prospective employers looking for a job in various fields of work.

Last week, I took Paul to lunch to have a conversation and it became clear that he was unhappy and that he was disillusioned and dissatisfied with his career progress. After all, Paul had been with Kids R Kids for only about 10 weeks. For some reason he had the false expectation that he was up for a pay raise and was due for a promotion as an assistant director. When, I cleared up his misconceptions, I believe that he had a reality check. It is my belief that the meeting led him to conclude that he was no longer going to be a part of Kids R Kids. Our school, as any normal employer would, has a scheduled system of employee reviews and merit raises. It is no surprise when I say the world of education is not the highest paying profession and we set Paul’s pay commensurate with his experience and skillset. After all, as an employee at will, he chose to accept the position for the title that were offered to him merely 10 weeks ago.

Last night, Paul was caught exporting confidential information to his personal e-mail account(s). This is evident and now the linkage can clearly be established because he has sent a mass e-mail to all of the families. We will contact our attorneys to take action against Paul. When Shameena confronted Paul about this matter and his dereliction of his duties, he fumed and threatened to choke my wife. We asked Paul to stay behind at the school until Police was called to the school. He wouldn't stay and left the site.

Over the past 4 years, we have come to know many of the Kids R Kids parents and I do believe that we run a fine school and that we have treated all of our parents, children and teachers and team members with the utmost respect and care. It is not the acts of people like Paul but the compassionate and hard work that our teachers and my wife have put in Kids R Kids that will stand the test of time.

I urge you to delete the e-mail from Paul and ignore his immature contents of his message. Tonight my wife and I discussed Paul’s message and our action plan with some of the parents. We will call the Police once again and ask that a police car patrol our school’s vicinity often for the next 2 weeks – hope this amount of time will cause Paul’s anger to subside and he will decide to move on with his life. If there are any remaining concerns you have, please feel free to e-mail me personally and I will do my best to respond appropriately. I cannot address each security concern and our plans in the interest of the safety of everyone involved; but please be assured that we are speaking to the Police Dept. to address this issue. Thank you and have a good night.

Kind Regards,

[sararl07]

Delete content...somehow posted twice

[sararl07]

To the families and employees of kids r kids,

I am sending out this mass email to the many parents and employees for those who wanted an update as to what is going to happen. I have contacted the corporate office of kids r kids about the incident and the police department to speak about the incident. I was told that the crime that is being investigated is assault and that is what I reported when I pressed charges today against shameena and arshad and the maintenance worker who tried to hold me against my will. Im also writing this to say that I am not doing anything on my part in the pursuit of vengeance, everything I am doing I am doing for the safety of the children and employees. If she can commit this heinous act to me in which I was in fear of my life and the life of my family then she can do it to any employee or person or child who tries to quit or somebody who angers her as per the threats that she was shouting at me when I left the school. As I said before you all need to make the best decision that will benefit you and the your families. I am not trying to persuade you to do anything only to inform you as it is your right to know this information as it effects everyone.

To the employees of both past and present who have left and who have stayed I say this: do not fear of having your reputation tarnished or your employment terminated for an illegal means or any future employment opportunities in early childhood education, I have been in contact with another preschool, a beautiful one, who has told me that they are in need of plenty of teachers and I have offered my assistance in giving references and help to anybody who needs new employment in a safe environment. I myself am pursing new employment here and things are looking better.

Be safe,

Paul

[sararl07]

Dear Parent’s

I was made aware that another email went out today from Paul to most of the families. I am again sorry for this and am working very closely with the police dept. and attorneys. He has already been given warnings andcease and desist letter has already been sent out to him. My attorneys are working on it diligently to make sure to prevent this from happening again. I urge all my parents to discourage him at this point for future communications and I appreciate those parents who have already done this. If there are any remaining concerns you have, please feel free to e-mail me personally and I will do my best to respond appropriately, but please be assured that we are speaking to the Police Dept. to put an end to this issue. I will be more than happy to pass the case number if anyone of you would like to talk to the police dept. personally. Thank you and have a good evening.

[Lola]

sararl07 Ygpm

[Leapinglizards]

I would probably email Paul but then again I am a nosy bitch. Just to clarify what practices he saw. You would get a biased view, but I wouldn't just take the DC's word

[Deleted]

I don't know what I'd do. That's crazy. I worked at a day care for many years. I do know the turn over at day cares is crazy fast. Directors and other employees really don't get paid well. They usually end up finding other better paying jobs somewhere else. But that's crazy drama and he should not have your email. Not okay.

[Lola]

Agreed that it's crazy!

[Liv]

Geez I'm so sorry! That's so confusing! And scary! I hope the truth comes out.

On a somewhat unrelated note... I'm side-eyeing "Paul" for grammatical errors alone. (Affect/effect really gets under my skin...!)

[littlemissmarla]

I have to agree with PP that the turn over rate in day cares is really high. I would try not to get too attached to any teachers as they can leave at the drop of a hat.

I am actually really shocked at the initial email and how detailed it is, personally I think that is unprofessional to be divulging that much employee information whether or not Paul was in the right or wrong. Now I'm sure there are a lot of parents who are confused and concerned when they could have just written something a little shorter to let you know that Paul is no longer with the company. If you are truly concerned I would voice your concerns to the corporate office or contact your state licensing department. In my experience of working in an early childhood center you need to go directly to the top to get any action.

[sararl07]

Feb 18, 2015 21:43:30 GMT -5 littlemissmarla said:

I have to agree with PP that the turn over rate in day cares is really high. I would try not to get too attached to any teachers as they can leave at the drop of a hat.

I am actually really shocked at the initial email and how detailed it is, personally I think that is unprofessional to be divulging that much employee information whether or not Paul was in the right or wrong. Now I'm sure there are a lot of parents who are confused and concerned when they could have just written something a little shorter to let you know that Paul is no longer with the company. If you are truly concerned I would voice your concerns to the corporate office or contact your state licensing department. In my experience of working in an early childhood center you need to go directly to the top to get any action.

My husband and I were also shocked they went into so much detail. Very unprofessional and legally I don't think you can from an hr perspective (in thier emails they gave his full name multiple times) but the scenario came out of no where since we did not receive Pauls initial email to parents.

Here are some of the Questions we are asking....
1) what happened
2) police case number
3)what measures are taking place to make sure it's a safe environment for my child
4) what is being done so this doesn't happen again
5) if he took our personal emails what other information of ours could he have taken.... Child's health records , address, credit card/ banking info?

[stellabunny]

They all sound crazypants. The day care for giving that much information and their insane turnover in their office manager position. Paul for stealing the email addresses and God only knows what else. I'd be looking for a new place to send my kid, away from all of them.

[anotherdreamer]

Feb 18, 2015 21:43:30 GMT -5 littlemissmarla said:

I have to agree with PP that the turn over rate in day cares is really high. I would try not to get too attached to any teachers as they can leave at the drop of a hat.

I am actually really shocked at the initial email and how detailed it is, personally I think that is unprofessional to be divulging that much employee information whether or not Paul was in the right or wrong. Now I'm sure there are a lot of parents who are confused and concerned when they could have just written something a little shorter to let you know that Paul is no longer with the company. If you are truly concerned I would voice your concerns to the corporate office or contact your state licensing department. In my experience of working in an early childhood center you need to go directly to the top to get any action.

I am totally shocked too. You can't even legally give out that much detail to other potential employers if they call for references here. They both sound shady and I would get the police report, contact the corporate office, and probably start shopping for another DC provider. I have no experience with DC, but that sounds really shady and would make me uncomfortable.

[dawnfire]

That sounds like way more drama and TMI that you didn't need to know. A simple letter stating something about how there will be a new manager or something would have been sufficient. I think you're right to be concerned.

I don't know what state you're in, but I think most (all?) states keep an online database where you can view any infractions that have been found by inspections of daycares. I'd check there first to see what might be listed as violations. When I was looking for DCs, most of them had at least 1 or 2 violations. I always looked at the detail to see what it was--from what I've seen they've ranged from didn't have an emergency evacuation route posted to huge things like dangerous onjects in the play areas.

Good luck, you have every right to be freaked out!

[ladytiffany24]

Wow. What a mess! I'm not sure what I'd do either...although, i'm also a nosey bitch so I might be inclined to email Paul to get more of his side of the story.

Also, totally agree that the DC sent out WAY too much info. As an HR professional, I can tell you that that's probably going to come back to bite them in the but if there are any kind of legal proceedings.

I'm sorry you're having to go through this. So stressful! Hugs!

[honeybee434]

I would probably contact the corporate office as well. Ask them about the personal information breech and what they are doing in this situation. And I would want to know what other daycare Paul is talking about so I don't send my kid to that new one.

At the end of the day if the people in LO's room that are the ones actually taking care of them have been there for years and you feel comfortable with, then I would probably still be okay with LO staying there. The management isn't doing the daily care of your child, the room workers are. But, I would probably look around and research other daycares to see if anything better was out there. Who knows, maybe you will find one you like better! And you know you have a place right now in case there is a waiting list, etc.