JOYNERWHAT

Review of Auraria Early Learning Center

I am a student at CU Denver. I came here trying to...

I am a student at CU Denver. I came here trying to enroll my 14 month old son as part time. They explained there are limited spots and that a lottery will be held on 12/5/17 starting around 7am for open enrollment. I arrived at 6:20 and was the 4th person in line. As I waited, several more parents arrived (some with their kids)with the same hopes as everyone else there. It was very cold and as employees arrived, they made it a point to not look at the line and most had the same tired/uncaring/blank look in their face. When they opened the door, around 20 people were lined up. As the first person walked in they had him draw a number. His number was 26. I was the 4th in line and received 13. I didn t know how this was going to go down, so I went to a play area where they were to explain everything further. They came back and called #1. The parent with that number had just got there and drew that number. She went back and presumably enrolled her child. Nothing else was explained. The 1st guy in line went to ask how this works and they told him they would be calling out the numbers in order. He had been there since 5:45am waiting in the cold for a fair shot at enrollment and was basically beat out by someone who had just strolled up. This is not a lottery. This is chaos. A lottery works on the principal that everyone who is there has a fair shot. If there are 40 numbers(or however many)in a hat, with only 20 or so present at the time of the number distribution, how is that even a lottery. They were still handing out numbers to people just arriving at around 7:30 and they were receiving places in line ahead of the people who had been there since an hour before they were open. How bout you give numbers to people who are there, put those numbers in a hat and draw. That s a lottery. If you hand a person number 26 when there aren t even 26 people there, you have just told that person they have no chance. After witnessing how the man in front of me was treated, I approached the assistant director (I believe) and inquired about how this works. She explained it exactly how I thought it was going down. Again, that is not a lottery. That isn t even a fair playing field. There are more numbers than people present and then they go down the list chronologically. I am thankful for the experience because I could see how the people who worked there reacted to this and they all seemed indifferent. Jaded almost. If you can afford to go somewhere else I would recommend doing so. This is a last resort kind of place in my opinion.