Cabrillo Montessori School of Silicon Valley, Santa Clara | Fees, Rankings, Address, Admission, Vacancies, Reviews & More

Incident # 1:
Many months back, our son fell in the school playground area and had a bit cut on his forehead and had to have few stiches. We spoke to the director of the school who then called the founder -Colleen and we had a discussion about this unpleasant event that we had to go thru with our son and we as a parent requested the school team to take care of the very uneven surface that they have in the play area. Founder assured that they will look into this aspect and asked us not to share this information with other parents or on social media. We agreed!

Incident # 2:
Few months back, again our son fell while tri-cycling in the play area and again we had a conversation with the same set of people and the response was “we don’t feel to make the changes to the cemented surface as it would cost a bit of money”

Incident #3:
Three weeks back, my wife happened to be in the school a bit early to attend ‘parents-teachers’ conference and since she was early for the meeting, she was watching our son playing with his friends in the play-ground and apparently one other kid kicked our son on his chest while he was about to go down on a slide and as a mother just happened to be there and see the other kid kicking, she spoke to the class teacher about the incident.

The next day, we got an email from the director asking us to come to school and meet her. We agreed and went to school on Thursday (9th Nov) at 9am and dropped our son to the playground area and we went to meet the director in her office. Again, that founder came to the school and the first thing she said to us was ‘WE ARE TERMINATING YOUR SON FROM SCHOOL, SINCE THIS IS NOT THE SCHOOL THAT FITS YOUR NEEDS AND THIS IS MY FINAL DECISION’ and this statement stunned and shocked us. My wife commented:” This is not fair. Why should our son go through this? Can we discuss and talk about this?,” the founder said: “STOP BARKING BEHIND MY BACK!” with another shock, my wife asked as “what did you just say”, again the founder said ‘YES, STOP BARKING’ … At this point, my wife said that she wants to talk the class teacher and by then, the founder took her phone and said to my wife: “If you take one step in that direction, I will call the cops.” At this point of time our son was still playing in the playground. She then asked the director to go and get our son from the play area and gave us the contract paper and said to leave the campus right away.

In spite of such a shocking incident happening to us, I thought that since we had spoken to them twice earlier about some safety issue in the school, probably they could have had an impression that we have been interfering in the school process and this reason could have triggered this inhumane behavior of the founder. As a father, I sent out an apologetic email asking her to have mercy and not to punish our son and take him back to school.. but there was no response.

So my question to you all is: As a parent, don’t we have the right to talk about the safety of our child to the teacher? Being in a Montessori school environment, where is the openness and also the culture of being a family? Do we really have keep quite looking at other kid bullying? (yes, because we had seen and spoken to the assistant teacher who was in the playground earlier about this same kid slapping our son) I am pretty sure that the other kid is unaware of what he is doing, but the teachers are out there to take the right actions and not to take this kind of hasty decision.

Just because she runs 3 other montessori in Milpitas area, that doesn’t mean that she can be a rude dictator AND inhuman. Being a school founder, just think what a language came out of her mouth and that clearly shows the attitude of the person and at the same time, I wonder how would these inhuman people can celebrate ‘ThanksGiving” or “Christmas” by spoiling one kid’s happiness.. What an irony of running a school ??

Ms. Alyssa, the lead teacher in his assigned classroom is amazing! She’s patient and nurturing, and my son absolutely adores her. We receive weekly updates about subjects that the students learned through the week as well as quarterly reports specific to our child’s learning and behavior. During the last parent teacher conferences, we had booked the last time slot of the day, and Ms. Alyssa was very generous with her time, responding to questions we had about our son’s activities. Ms. Alyssa and other staff have demonstrated time and time again that they deeply care about our child’s learning and well-being.

The campus is well kept and the classroom is clean. The play area is spacious and the gardening section is very cute too! Families are asked to pay an annual materials fee, but I feel that the fee is justified as the materials used in some of the art projects appear to cost more than the average materials like crayons and construction paper. The school partners with several independent providers who offer extracurricular activities which are very convenient (e.g., drum class and soccer).

Overall, my son is in good spirits and returns home from school very happy. He even asks my husband to pick up our other son first so he can spend more time at school! We believe that Cabrillo Montessori has played an important role in building his communication and interpersonal skills as well as his motivation to help around the house and try new activities. I recommend Cabrillo Montessori for any parent looking for a balanced, fun, and educational community for their child.