An Open Letter to the Founder of OB Montessori: Ms Preciosa Soliven

I would like to share with you my experience in dealing with OB Montessori, Greenhills.

Dear Ms Soliven,

I am writing to you today to express my disappointment on how OB Montessori handled my son’s application. I wish to tell you the story as it transpired this morning.

I am a mother of a highly functional child with special needs. I read in the Philippine Star an article that you published named “Developing school guidance program to normalize dysfunctional children” and kept a copy of it for future reference. During that time my son was enrolled in a mainstream progressive preschool called Lincolnshire Internationale Preschool. He will be graduating on March which prompted me to start looking for a school that would accommodate him for the 1st grade.

Due to your article, I placed OB Montessori on top of my list. It is an established educational institution and has produced grounded students. It can offer grade school plus high school and accepts special needs children. I thought to myself that your school would be a perfect fit for my child. Of course, that is if you decide to accept my son after assessment.

I readily called the registrar’s office to get the list of requirements, visited your website to download the application form and gathered all the documents. As per the person who I spoke to over the phone, since my child has special needs, they will need to first review all the documents before they can schedule me for an interview and assessment. This was nothing out of the ordinary and since it is your internal policy, I happily obliged.

This morning, since I had a meeting in Greenhills, I decided to drop by OB Montessori to drop off my son’s application form and requirements and to do my due diligence as well. I liked what I saw, when it came to the facilities. The grounds were clean and looked like they were well-maintained.

As soon as I got to the registrar’s office, I saw two ladies. I am a stickler for excelent customer service and the first thing I noticed was that the two ladies failed to immediately acknowledge my existence. They were chatting incessantly. After a while they asked me for my purpose. I immediately expressed my intention of applying for a Grade 1 slot. The other lady made me sit down while she reviewed my child’s requirements. I believe her name was Ms Gabucao, if I am not mistaken.

I brought a photocopy of the following documents:

1. Birth certificate

2. Developmental reports from my child’s current school (LIP – mainstream school)

3. Reports on his therapy development from Shine Intervention, his SPED school

4. Developmental report from Dra Benitez, my son’s old dev pedia

5. Government recognition of LIP, my son’s current school

6. Narrative report on LIP Arts & Crafts class

Including 2 sets of 1×1 photo in blue background and the application form.

I was missing the following:

1. My son’s current assessment from Therabilities, his OT center as he only has done 5-6 sessions starting November.

2. Old assessment from first Dev Pedia plus the most recent assessment from current Dev Pedia. His old Dev Pedia already retired.

I explained to Ms Gabucao why my son’s records were not complete and how I planned to send the other requirements to her as soon as I have gathered everything. But I was hoping that they can start reading the documents I have sent as these were a lot.

Unfortunately, these were the impressions I got:

1. She would only accept the first and most recent/current dev pedia assessments, not even considering the therapy reports of my son. I found this odd as my son sees his dev pedia once every year, as he is considered highly functional. His therapy sessions, however, are at least 3x a week.

2. She was already preempting that my son will not have a slot in your school as you have students in the pre-schoo level already having “difficulties” and will soon be moving up to the grade school level. This is fine by me. However, I did not appreciate the fact that prior to assessment she already assumed that my child will have difficulty in OB.

3. She gave the impression that OB Montessori did not have an existing program for special needs children which is contrary to your published article.

She kept on emphasizing that my son is not assured of a seat, which I was fully aware of that is why I was APPLYING. She kept on saying that my documents were incomplete and that she will put my application on hold, which (again) was totally fine until she repeated it several times. I got a bit irked and started to showmy irritation. But not wanting to create a scene, I left after getting the schedule of fees.

I felt like my child was already pre-judge just because he is not like the other children. I felt like a humiliated parent. After a few minutes, I decided that I did not want to pursue my application anymore and that OB Montessori is not for my child. I called the registrar’s office to speak to Ms Gabucao (again Im not sure of that was her name) to tell her that I have decided to withdraw the application of my child and that I will ask someone to pull out the documents, hoping that she would at least ask what my concern was. But she simply said “Ok.” What ever happened to customer service?!

After a few minutes I received a call from Ms Rose Domingo, Ms Gabucao’s immediate superior, wanting to know if I can share to her the reason why I was pulling out my son’s application. I told her about my experience, my disappointment, my frustrations, how furious I was, how my son was pre-judged even before looking through the documents I sent or even before meeting him in person. Fortunately, she was able to pacify my anger and explain to me in detail OB Montessori’s SPED program. My husband and I decided to give it another chance by calling Ms Domingo back for an assessment schedule. I am thankful for people like Ms Domingo who empathizes with parents, like myself. She is an asset to your institution.

Ms Soliven, my son has autism. I acknowledge that he has specific and special needs. But that does not make him stupid. He is one of the smartest kids I know. He can identify the different flags of different countries. He’s been reading since he was 3. He knows how to skip counting by 2s, 5s, 10s at age 3. He’s a stickler for details and a perfectionist at times. He’s one of the sweetest boys I know and I just want the best for him.

I want to share with you this story because I want to make sure that this will not happen to other parents. It might be a good idea if you share your valuable insights on excellent customer service and that children with special needs should not be judged harshly.

Thank you for reading my very long and passionate letter. God bless!

Sincerely yours,

Gail Consolacion

Mother of Jaime Ignacio Consolacion, a special child

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