Dwight Way Center - UC Berkeley
Berkeley, CA
To see Department of Social Services records on this facility, click on its DSS Facility License # below.
Parent Q&A
The UC Berkeley Early Childhood Education program works with university dining services to provide mostly organic, nutritious lunches and snacks. It's such a relief for working parents. The program has three preschool sites. Enrollment is generally August through July, but it's worth checking to see if there's an unexpected vacancy. It's not a perfect program and the university bureaucracy is a lot to deal with, but I've liked all the teachers we've had since my daughter was 3 months old.
My daughter has been in the UCB Early Childhood Education Program, which has 5 different centers, for over 2 years. She's 2 1/2 years old now. We were in the infant and toddler rooms at the Dwight Way center, and recently migrated to Clark Kerr for the older toddler program. We had a few rough patches in terms of staff turnover at Dwight, but I've always been happy with the quality of care and the modern facilities there. The Clark Kerr center is in an older building, but has fantastic access to outdoors space. There's a 1:4 teacher-student ratio, plus lots of extra support from student assistants who are terrific with little kids. But the program has a long waitlist, and we just started our school year.
I also checked out St. John, which seems to be great at providing individualized care, including transitioning between rooms when the child is ready instead of on a fixed schedule. I almost moved my daughter there except that she was pretty settled into the UCB program by the time a slot opened up.
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