Ocean Beach

As the parent of a beautiful precocious toddler, we embraced the WW Promise but the dream began to fade one winter day at the pickup gate, when the Kindergarten teacher reacted to my "How’d she do today?" with an out-of-the-corner of her mouth use of the R slur...to describe her concern. This teacher obviously didn’t realize who was standing behind her at the time - and I actually froze as my child came running toward me with a huge smile. It certainly broke my heart to hear such an impenetrable word from an educator entrusted to care for children at such a pivotal point in their emotional and academic development.After the winter break, I tried multiple times to meet with this teacher to discuss her comment that day because I knew this teacher was struggling and I wanted to reassure her and offer our support as parents in any way possible.But instead this teacher escalated her concerns and we were called into a meeting with the Headmistress, who recommended we have our child assessed for a possible learning disability. We soon discovered our daughter has Dyslexia! So, Mystery solved :) For our part, we immediately agreed with the Headmistress' recommendation to enroll her in an educational therapy program that has an on-campus presence plus an intensive Summer program to follow, to alleviate any concerns by the school. This was the handshake and the agreement offered to us by the Headmistress Pam Volker when we met with her at the parent-teacher conference on May 3, 2023. As parents, we were only too happy to make the additional financial commitment in support of our daughter and the school. But we never expected the same Mrs Volker to renege on her promise via email just two months later, followed by an abrupt letter “releasing us from our contract” and then a refund check. All of this wreaks of discrimination and I am amazed by the (lack of) reaction by the Headmistress to the kindergarten teacher’s struggle.Instead of acknowledging that this school may be financially unable to commit additional resources for faculty training and/or an internal program to hold themselves accountable through the Accreditation Process, they simply chose to quietly release us from our contract only weeks before the start of the academic year, stating they can’t accommodate our daughter’s disability.