Reserving a daycare spot

wieb67

Hi all So, I'm starting my LO in daycare two days a week in January. The daycare I want to use requested a registration fee plus a weeks tuition. This seems normal - but she said that would only hold his spot for four weeks. I need to pay fifty bucks a week to hold his spot after that. Is this a normal thing? I would think many parents would want to reserve a daycare spot more than a month in advance and this just feels like money down the drain.

minirella

Yes, it does depend on the daycare and what the pp stated. There is one that I was on the waiting list for that you have to pay full months tuition if you want the spot. For example, if you don't need the spot until January but the spot opens up in November, you would have to pay the full tuition for November and December. If you pass, then they go onto the next person on the waiting list.

BabyHope2013

I have heard of things like this before. For our son we only had to pay $25 to hold his spot for 6 months. However, I have a co-worker that has their daughter in daycare about 30 minutes away from where we live that has a much higher demand. They had to pay $50 to register her there and then had to pay weekly to hold her spot. They paid that weekly price 2 months before she was born and then an additional almost 3 months while his wife was on maternity leave. CRAZY. But they were not sure if they would be able to find childcare close to home otherwise. 

wieb67

For those that mentioned paying a weekly fee, did that go towards tuition or no? If it did I wouldn't care but if not that's like 200 bucks going nowhere. I'm cool with paying tuition early as I'll be paying it anyway.

*sparky*

A couple of DCs I spoke to did NOT do this but some did.  And as the others wrote, the money does not go to your future tuition - it is the cost of having them keep that spot open until you start because she cannot bring anyone else in.

wieb67

Thanks all, might be worth it to just start him a couple weeks early

shakinros

Seems normal to me if your daycare is in high demand. As the others said, they have a spot they could be making money on. So either you pay for it (to hold it for your kiddo) or someone else will pay for it and enroll their kid. Bummer for you but I get why they do it!

shannm

Sounds pretty extreme. Do you have a sense of a wait list or if there would be an issue if you didn't reserve a spot in advance? Know any other families there that could give you insight?

MickeyM04

I have never heard of this before (Chicago area) but apparently it's not abnormal.  To me, I get the logic, but I would think you could find a good daycare that doesn't do this.  Like I said, I have never heard of this and we toured SEVERAL centers.  Unless there was literally no other center I liked, I would have a huge problem paying $X per week for however many months until I needed DC, especially if that money just goes down the drain, so to speak, and doesn't get applied to tuition. 

If it were me, I would tour several centers and see what the policies were.  If I found two DCs I liked equally and one charged a weekly fee and one didn't, I would go with the one that didn't.  I'm not convinced you can't find an excellent daycare that doesn't do this, especially since we are in a HCOL area and I have literally never seen this at a DC before.

Stormytucker

In my are it's extremely hard to get into a daycare center with a baby. Space is very limited and in high demand, I went on a waiting list when I was 20 weeks pregnant and my son didn't get a spot until he was 5 months old!

Our center also has a payment to hold spot policy, and I do understand why with their limited space. I would have had to pay the hold fee also if l was not ready for him to start when they had an open spot! I looked for months for another option but it was very much the same everywhere around me.

Mustardseed2007

Yeah with us if there had been a spot open before we were wanted to attend, we would have had to pay tuition to keep the spot.  

This ended up not being a factor for us b/c we were able to immediately take the spot as soon as it opened.  To put it another way, there weren't any spots until the beginning of a term, so we were covering time before daycare became available with family assistance.

For some DCs in our area, if there is a spot and your child had not been born yet, they would have gone to the next family on the list rather than giving you an option to pay to keep the spot.

ETA: I live in a large city, but it's not like that in every area of the city. In my area, quality daycares are packed full. Where my BIL and SIL live, it seems as if you can pretty much walk up anywhere and get a spot or take off for a summer and not worry about getting your spot in the fall. Where a friend of mine lives, the DC situation is even tighter than the area where I live. Again, all in the same city, just different areas of town.

ASmallWonder

I don't think this is that odd.  Luckily, our daycare plans out exactly when each child will move up, meaning they know when spots will be available and they have built in weeks of less than full capacity to their business plan, I guess.  

MickeyM04

Ah yes for an in home it definitely makes sense because they can't bring someone else on whereas at a DC center they know when everyone is switching rooms and can plan accordingly. I assumed OP was talking about a center but I may have missed the mark.

wieb67

MickeyM04 said:

Ah yes for an in home it definitely makes sense because they can't bring someone else on whereas at a DC center they know when everyone is switching rooms and can plan accordingly. I assumed OP was talking about a center but I may have missed the mark.

I was talking about a center. Another daycare center we are looking at charges a fee plus first and last week tuition and only holds the spot for 30 days. I just assumed I'd have to start looking earlier than that but maybe not. One mom in my area said she had to book her daycare like a year in advance!

emberlee3

I have heard of this policy at the more in-demand daycares in my area.

Maynard92014

Even in a center they are holding a space. As a teacher, I have seen our center hold a spot and then have parents decide not to come. Months of paying staff and no recuperating the money. I have encouraged our director to get more strict as we have a good reputation in the small community where infant/ toddler spots are at a premium. I know I am fortunate to not be paying to hold the spot for my little one since I am a teacher at the school, but I also see the business side as well knowing the director has been holding his spot for months.

wieb67

lovemymuttzillas said:

In my area, you go on a waiting list months in advance but there is no guarantee that a spot will be available when you need it. You don't put down a deposit until the spot is confirmed and it's used as your last week's payment. This means you need to be on multiple waiting lists and hope something works out. The whole process is driving me crazy.

That really sucks - it's so stressful thinking about leaving your baby at daycare not to mention the possibility of not getting a spot at all!

Thanks for the responses everyone - we ended up going with the daycare that charges to hold the spot - since LO is only going two days a week we are starting him mid Dec (when I go back to work) rather than waiting till after the holidays like we had intended. My husband has my first week back to work off but this way he can get some stuff done when the baby is gone for the day! Now to hire a nanny for the other three days...

NADA-H

I'm not in the states, but to book my baby's spot I had to pay for an entire month (she only started at the last week of that month) because she was under the age of when they accept babies which is 2 months, I also had to pay the registration fee which is high.

my baby's DC fees are 880 USD per month for 5 days a week/ full day care (till 5:30pm) and the registration fee was 275 USD so to book her spot I paid a total of 1155 USD at one go