Ni Hao Preschool - Redondo Beach

My child has been attending NiHao since he was 2-year old. Overall, the experience is pretty positive. Pros: - Teachers mostly speak Mandarin, making my kid feel comfortable and secure while his parents are away as we mainly speak Mandarin at home - Teachers are caring, patient, and look after children's emotional well-being - They partner with Sender One Climbing. Teachers will take children for rock climbing once a month if you participate. - Annual events (e.g. Mother's day, Father's day, Chinese New Year) that foster great parent-child bonding. Cons: - Teacher typically stay for only 1.5 to 2 years - The outdoor space is not very large, but sufficient enough for daily activity.

Ni Hao is a Chinese immersion program where all of the teaches speak Mandarin to kids. It's split into two classes, the "small" class and the "big" class and I think class placement is whether or not the child is potty trained. You have the options of doing part-time enrollment or full time enrollment (e.g. 2, 3, or 5 days) and even the length duration (6 hours or 9 hours long per day) Pros: (1) Chinese immersion. It's hard to find daycares with Chinese immersion period, so any and all exposure to Chinese is helpful. My child has picked up new Chinese vocabulary since starting. (2) Inspected, certified properly. Yes, there's been findings, but at least they are registered unlike some "daycares" I've seen...So I'm happy knowing that an inspector will come around to check them out and issue a public report. (3) Pricing seems to be in line with some other daycares we checked out. (4) Safety: there's a gate code for parents and they teach fire, earthquake and I also think active shooter drills (5) Activities: They have special events, like mothers and father's day, Chinese New Years, graduation, etc. that's fun to attend (6) Parent/Teacher feedback: there's semiannual feedback from the teacher to go over kid process and recommendations that we've found useful (7) After School Program: For those interested, there's an after school program once your kid starts elementary. For kids in Washington and Madison, there's a new transportation pickup option that they just started this year (8) Location wise, this option works best for us (9) So far, knock on wood, my kid seems to like all the teachers Cons: (1) Teacher Turnover. The biggest issue I've seen/heard about from other parents is how management treats their teachers (e.g. low pay and drama). I'm sure some of the turnover has to be due to visas or personal reasons outside of Ni Hao, but it also sounds like part of the turnover is due to management. So kids who get attached to one teacher will probably be very upset if that teacher leaves. (2) Communication: I think there might be a language barrier for those who speak Chinese and those who don't? My Chinese isn't the best, so I've had to repeat things in both English and Chinese just to make sure that I'm not misunderstanding anything. But for those parents who are English only speakers, that might be an issue. (3) Timely Responses: Sometimes Ni Hao is fast to respond, but sometimes not. I would recommend reaching out to all possible contacts if you need an issue fixed timely. Overall: Luckily my child is not impacted by teacher turnover so I've mainly experienced the positive aspects and none of the drama (again, knock on wood). Moving from a different state where Chinese immersion daycares and after school programs are not even an option, I'm very happy this school is available. For those parents trying to teach their kids Chinese, it's a very very tough road, so any available options are appreciated.

My daughter spent several years going to this school and the experience could not have been more disappointing. The good: the teachers are (mostly) caring and want to see the kids happy, healthy, and safe. They open and close on time. The bad: the management! The management of this place was SO BAD during our time there. They understaff it to the point that they were cited by the state at several locations (look it up!) so the teachers are constantly stretched to the brink. Teachers told us that they cried daily because they were stretched so thin and pushed so hard. They fired multiple teachers that were loved by parents and kids without warning who would try to bring up issues. Then they would bring in random staff from a temp agency so that our kids were with different people every day without introduction or notification. The ridiculous management style meant that in just over a year, every single staff member that had worked at the school left or was disappeared by the management (they would tell us they left for “personal reasons” or “retirement”, lying to parents, and when we reached out to the teachers they would tell us a completely different reason). The only way the school has any staff is that they recruit young women off Instagram in Taiwan and bring them in on internship visas for a year. I honestly don’t mind bringing in foreign staff for a Mandarin immersion school, but even though they knew exactly when each teacher’s visa would expire, they would never prepare parents or staff that their loved/trusted teacher was leaving. They would just suddenly disappear. Ironically, the Mandarin education at this place was quite poor despite the temporary foreign teacher parade. Her Mandarin got worse in the several years she spent at Ni Hao, not better. There was almost no formal education in Mandarin and the informal education of “immersion” was not maintained at all by the teachers, as they would quickly devolve to English in an attempt to maintain order in the understaffed classes with kids who did not speak Mandarin fluently. Many of the staff, especially those brought in from temp agencies, didn’t speak Mandarin at all. Worst of all was the communication from the school. They tended to shroud themselves in secrecy about staffing changes and management choices rather than communicating with parents what to expect. They had a zoom town hall meeting with parents in 2022 to go over these issues and it ran over 3 hours with irate parents complaining, but nothing changed. I think the poor management has a lot to do with nepotism and lack of focus. The main manager, Fong, is the husband of the owner Lisa, so it’s not like she’s going to fire him. Parents’ emails go unanswered for weeks to months. Parents have to coordinate their asks and try to target him via text or phone call and try to get other parents’ questions answered because we share so many similar questions and struggle to get basic responses. At one point, they brought in another manger to help him, Lucy, with no experience at all in early childhood education. She had just run an ice cream shop! Then they let her directly “teach” classes even though she had no early childhood education credits or experience! (I think this might technically be illegal at a licensed preschool.) I can only imagine she had to be related to the owner in some way. Rather than concentrate on improving the situation at these schools, management seemed more preoccupied with ill-conceived spin off businesses like publishing their own books or selling mandarin education online. I could go on and on. Bottom line, your kid won’t learn much Mandarin here. They will potentially be put in dangerous situations in a short staffed preschool by management who doesn’t communicate with parents, tries to hide what’s really go on, and seems more concerned with eliminating staff who complain and pursuing side profit opportunities than maintaining well-staffed schools. Unless you’re absolutely desperate, I wouldn’t choose this school.

The five stars are for the teachers. They are very caring, loving and responsible.