A parent cooperative school is owned and operated by the school families. Professional teachers are responsible for the planning and implementation of the curriculum, and a parent board runs the business aspects of the school. Parents work in the classroom, attend general meetings, serve on a committee and participate in school maintenance. Specific member responsibilities can be found on our Parent Participation page.
Children in our Preschool (3 year old) class are not required to be toilet trained.
If you are unable to work your scheduled day you may have a family member fill in for you, trade days with another school family, or hire a substitute from our parent sub list. The substitute fee is $35 paid directly to the parent sub.
Participating parents may not bring other children when working in the classroom, however, siblings are always welcome at class parties and on field trips.
Our three rules at school are Be Kind, Be Safe, and Have Fun! These three things combined with a carefully planned environment set children up to succeed.
Physical punishment, shaming, and humiliation are never acceptable forms of discipline at VPP. Children will not be “made an example of” or talked to or about in a derogatory fashion.
Below are our specific discipline strategies:
- Maintain realistic expectations of children
- Provide clear and simple limits
- Plan an environment that facilitates a caring atmosphere
- Provide meaningful experiences that keep children engaged and prevent problems from occurring in the first place
- Model appropriate behaviors
- Redirect inappropriate behaviors toward desired outcomes
- Give children choices between two appropriate alternatives
- Encourage children to work together to solve problems and make cooperative decisions
- Give children words to solve problems or to elicit peer cooperation
- Provide logical and natural consequences to children’s actions
- When there is a safety concern, lovingly remove children from the situation until they are calm and able to discuss the problem
- Introduce conflict resolution and problem solving skills
We do everything we can to ensure a safe and healthy environment for all children in our program. At this time we have a number of children with serious, life-threatening nut allergies and therefore NO NUTS or PRODUCTS PRODUCED ON EQUIPMENT SHARED WITH NUTS are allowed at school or school functions where children are present.
If your child has an allergy, or any other needs we should be aware of, we ask that you let us know so we can ensure we have the proper paperwork, emergency medications, and training needed to keep your child safe at school.
Reference Documents:
We have one non co-op spot available in each of the Preschool and Pre-Kindergarten classes. The non co-op option relieves parents of the classroom responsibilities only, and families are still required to attend general meetings, serve on a committee and fulfill their maintenance hours. The tuition for the non co-op option is $370 for Preschool and $480 for Pre-K. This option is not currently available for the Kinderprep class.
Registration for the upcoming school year begins in January. To learn more about enrolling your child, please visit our Registration page.
If you’d like to schedule a tour to see our program and meet our teachers, please see our Schedule a Tour page to see the available dates.
If you have specific questions that have not been answered here, send an email to info [at] valleyparent [dot] org or call our membership line at (925) 837-5401.
