Bridges Montessori School, Bel Air

We have enjoyed Bridges Montessori so much. The teachers and staff are attentive to each child’s unique needs and personality while working educational magic in clever and relevant ways. Learning become a matter of pride and confidence. It’s been such fun to see our kids grow with Bridges! Bridges Montessori community will always be near to our hearts as integral in our family’s experience.

As parents we have had the worst experience with Bridges Montessori School. We have had 2 kids there (2 years each), Ages 3-5. Here are a few things you should know before you send your kid here.. Horrible Communication -- You are not allowed to email, call, or text the teachers directly... all communication is through the Compass and is routed through a "director of communications" where you often receive passive aggressive responses that are uninformed. --- If your child gets in trouble during the day.. or radically misbehaves (as one of ours has in the past)... You will not receive a phone call, or talk when you pick up your kid... but sometimes a behavior report late in the evening... after you child has already told you the bad news leaving lots of questions as a parent. -- Sudden changes to contracts, where you sign up to pay $9.3K a year for 5 days a week... and find out during the term, teachers need more time to clean up and plan... and now your down to 4.5 days of kids in school with no compensation or reconsideration of price and given only 2 days to accept the changes in contract. Lack of Learning - Don't expect to receive quality weekly plans for what your kids will be learning. Instead the written plan, and I quote is “We will continue to have impromptu lessons”. Our child tell us about all the Mickey Mouse Club House, Magic School Bus, and Cat in the Hat videos they would watch every day.... Finally, given the COVID pandemic... we expect the highest level of sanitization, health practices and ethically responsible behavior set by the teachers for our kids class social bubble.... HOWEVER on several occasions our 3 yr old was sent to timeout in the bathroom, unsupervised when the teachers could not handle her behavior which is a high traffic area and the most unsanitary location full of dirty diapers. We were disgusted as parents when we discovered this through our daughter telling us "I had timeout in the bathroom".... When we asked the school what happened, the owner replied "If your kid cannot behave, and you do not allow us to put your child in the bathroom for timeout, then you have to come pick them up".... We told her this was unacceptable, and they did it again a week later… And still did not notify us until late in the evening several hours after the incident by email only.