Casa Esme Bilingual Nursery School

I teach Zumba for Kids here (in Spanish) and I truly love it! The staff and children are wonderful, and it is a very warm, caring, and safe environment. I’m impressed with how much Spanish the kids know, and they really seem to enjoy their time spent there. I have been teaching for over a year here and the more time I get to know everyone, the better it gets. Hooray for Casa Esme! :)

I’ve sent both of my children to Casa Esme since they were 5.5 months old. Casa Esme was recommended to me by a coworker who was moving away and had his 3 children in attendance. We checked it out with some apprehension since we were leaning more toward a center rather than a home setting, but Esme and her staff were so warm and attentive, we changed our minds. Our older daughter is entering preschool age now and we’re thrilled that Esme’s expansion project will accommodate her for another year. Our 3 year old has known how to write her name for quite some time. She carries on complete conversations in Spanish and knows some addition and subtraction in both languages. Our younger daughter understands Spanish and already knows how to count to 10, knows colors in both languages and both alphabets. Esme’s standard of care can’t be measured by skill bean counting, but rather the vibe you get from your children. Ours are happy to go to daycare, and talk about what they’ve learned at the end of the day. They are healthy and happy, and get more than just a classroom experience at Esme’s but a feeling of being sincerely cared for.

My infant child briefly attended this daycare in the Spring of 2008 until the EEC shut her down for several days for keeping many many children in excess of their license. The EEC was alerted to a potential problem by a neighbor who found a child under 2 wandering outside Esme’s house.
It was later learned, from the EEC, that Esme had an unlicensed room on the second floor of her home where infants were being held during the day. The parents never saw this room as it was not part of the daycare portion of the home. I thought my child was being kept with the rest of the children but he was held in a room I had never even been in – and that the licensor hadn’t been in either since it was never disclosed as part of the daycare. The EEC briefly shut her down until she came back into compliance with her license. I believe at the time she was licensed to keep ten children at a time, with only a small number of those being infants.
The EEC ultimately allowed her to reopen when she proved compliance but our family never returned. If there had been a fire in the home, infants could have died because they were on an unlicensed floor of the home with not enough providers to carry them to safety if something had happened. This was a traumatic realization for our family.
I thought I had checked references properly-​consulting the Arlington Parents List and calling many parent references. We learned, subsequently, from the EEC to ALWAYS phone the licensing agent in your town to find out what violations have been brought against a daycare provider. That said, the EEC I believe will only tell you violations from the past five years. I hope parents will read this comment. I would never in a million years trust my child or yours w/​Esme. I was horrified that she would put the lives of babies at risk for her own financial gain. At the time, our family was horrified that she blamed families in need of infant care on her decision to operate outside the bounds of her license.
Please phone the EEC if you are considering this provider and find out if other violations have been brought against her. If you call the main office, you can ask to speak to the licensing agent in Arlington. And please consider other providers. I know how tough it is to find full time childcare but sometimes if something seems too good to be true, it probably is.

Our toddler daughter has been at Casa Esme for a year and a half and has had a wonderful experience. Esme and her staff are caring and extremely competent. My daughter leaps out of my arms every morning when we arrive and I’m so impressed with how much she learns each day. She comes home singing new songs every few weeks and often tells me the Spanish word for various things when we read books together. Casa Esme is an absolute gem.
Some great reviews are being hidden by Unilocal because the reviewers haven’t written much on the site (see the «not currently recommended» link below). I can vouch for the existence of each parent. Check them out!