When Kyanna Long moved to Maricopa from Casa Grande three weeks ago, she was thankful to find a Sunrise Preschool in town.
The mother of two enrolled her children in the Arizona-based preschool over the years because she grew to trust the program in other cities.
That changed Sept. 10.
When Long’s mother picked up 3-year-old Dakeyes Mootherly, who has autism, from Sunrise Preschool at 19287 N. Porter Road that day, he told her a teacher slapped his face.
“His grandma said he literally slapped himself, showing her how the teacher did it,” Long said.
The family weren’t sure what to make of the comment because they did not hear from the school about the incident, she said.
However, the next day Long’s mother received a Facebook message confirming this information. The relative of an employee at the preschool wrote, “Yesterday, the lady there slapped your grandson in the face.”
That sent Long looking for answers.
A witness comes forward
Vanessa Robinson said her niece was the employee who witnessed the slapping.
“She’s been telling us about a lot of incidents, but she’s scared to report them because she’s young and afraid of getting fired from her first job,” Robinson said.
The niece, who agreed to an interview under anonymity for fear of retaliation, said she saw employees pinching kids, putting children’s hands in vinegar to dissuade nose-picking and not changing diapers properly.
However, a child getting hit felt like a step too far. After the niece told her the boy’s last name, Robinson went to Facebook to inform Long’s family.
“I found the grandma on Facebook, and I wrote her right away,” she said.
Sunrise allegedly asked the niece to write and sign a statement about the slapping and told her to keep quiet when she tried to report it.
Sunrise Preschool. [File]“My boss told me to I needed to keep it between us, it doesn’t leave the daycare, it doesn’t leave the school,” the niece told InMaricopa. “I was in shock.”
InMaricopa contacted Sunrise Preschools, which declined to comment for this story.
Dropping the ball
Long returned to the school Sept. 11 seeking to confirm if a teacher slapped Mootherly, if there was video surveillance footage and why she wasn’t informed about the incident. She claims she was told the preschool’s surveillance system only captured live footage and she wasn’t given a reason as to why she wasn’t contacted after a teacher hit her son.
“The director was very unapologetic,” Long said. “All she told me was, ‘I’m sorry I dropped the ball.’ That’s it.”
So, she took her case to social media to let other parents know about the situation and to share her frustration.
“My son was slapped 24 hours before I was ever informed,” she wrote.
Since then, the post has been shared more than 800 times and other parents shared their negative experiences at the preschool. Some said their kids had come home with bruises or scratches and others weren’t changed into clean clothes after bathroom accidents.
Long said the incident left Mootherly scared to return to school.
“My son is on the [autism] spectrum and he’s nonverbal,” she said. “It’s hard for him to express his feelings sometimes, but he’s telling us he doesn’t want to go to school because he’s scared.”
Long said she believes there are good teachers at the preschool but wants to see a change in staff and management. In the meantime, she is planning to enroll her son into a different preschool program.
“He’s so innocent and sweet and he loved school until this happened,” she said. “I hate that he was not safe, and it gives me guilt because I dropped him off every morning expecting him to be treated well in a safe environment.”
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