Elsa's Last Day

A new company bought our daycare center and a lot of the teachers are leaving. The saddest thing for us is that Elsa is among them. Her last day is tomorrow. She wasn't asked to stay, which breaks my heart. And I think it's wrong and probably blatant agism, but what can we do? I called the new manager and wrote an email. That's all we can really do. Oh, and I put an ad on boobybrigade, this little crunchified LA breast feeding Yahoo support group, for her. She has two interviews lined up from the ad, so I'm hoping that even though losing her is a crushing blow for us, she'll have a better time of things working for individual families. Being a nanny in LA can be a pretty cushy gig, and since Elsa can drive and has an AA in Child Development, she's a pretty hot commodity. Not to mention she has a special gift with infants. She really is amazing. But this year her knee started to bother her a lot, so maybe working with fewer kids would be better.

Elsa was so wonderful to Zack and loves him so much. He holds out his arms to her every day when he arrives at the center. I can't imagine how he'll take it when he doesn't see her anymore, but I'm sure he'll survive. He made it through her vacation recently. He's older now and just likes to run around and play, but when he was little, he was Elsa's baby.

The one great thing about the new company is that they lowered the price of daycare by a LOT. Because they're paying the teachers so much less. Awesome. But apparently they somehow have the lowest retention rates around in spite of their pay rates. And another parent visited the other centers under this company and said they were really fantastic.

That's the email buzz that's been going around about the changeover. I think most of the parents are sticking around. The place is still beautiful, the price is right, and the new teachers seem really awesome. Just so sad about Elsa.