My family is grateful to have found a place that feels like a home away from home. Our kids love their teachers, friends, and community. The teachers are warm and thoughtful in their curriculum planning. Our children are nurtured and well taken care of. They love coming to school. The preschool children visit the yerba buena gardens frequently, which is awesome. We have had one of our kids go from the infant classroom through to graduation, and the other through the infant and toddler classrooms, who is now in preschool. We couldn't imagine not having SOMACC in our lives! They provide a stable learning environment that focuses on each child's individual development and needs.

We are so grateful to have had the opportunity to send our two children to SOMACC YBG. Our family has been at the school for five years, and the experience has been truly wonderful. The teachers and staff are loving skilled. Everything about the school is designed to support the children of working families from a wide variety of backgrounds. From the airy urban oasis of a campus, to the full-time schedule, to dental checks, to services in many languages, SOMACC walks the walk. I have worked in nonprofits and in education my entire career and have never encountered an organization that so embodies the best of what our diverse society and community could be. I will be eternally grateful for the opportunity to be part of the wonderful school.

SOMACC YBG has been a fantastic place for our daughter to learn and grow. She gets tremendous support from the wonderful teachers and staff and our family feels very integrated into the SOMACC community. SOMACC's dedication to adhering to city protocols through COVID and keeping all the children and families safe has been extremely admirable. Through it all, we felt well informed and Jennifer (along with all the bumblebee and butterfly teachers) have made the decision to send our child back to school an easy one. We love getting weekly updates with pictures and write ups about class room activities and how our child is participating and learning. Given how difficult 2020 was with juggling the pandemic and child care in general, we continued to decide to commute across the city to make sure our child could have the experience and support that SOMACC provided. I would absolutely recommend this preschool and this community to anyone looking for a great safe experience for their families and wonderful place for their kids to learn and grow.

Our child has been at SOMACC YBG for years and there is nowhere he and we would rather be. Everyone is just wonderful as they always have been from the start. In many ways its all about the kids, but at the same time, everyone's (Support staff, teachers', substitutes', custodians', community program staff, parents', etc) well being is taken care of because SOMACC cares about the child's relationship to their entire community. There's not room to name everyone, but thank you to Director Jennifer for always responding to parents concerns and leading Friday dance party; Joy, Roxy and Melinda for running administration so well; Simone for caring for our kids safety and individual development; Rod and family center staff for community building and outreach; SOMACC PAC for your dedication to enriching the kids' lives; and of course Teachers Saima, Winnie, Tina, Holly, Jasmine, Jenny, Tuba, and all the teachers for caring so much about all the kids development and well being. At school, when the older kids were graduating to kindergarten we talked to our son about graduating to other schools someday and how one day he might go to schools with names like Oxford and Cambridge. He responded that while he wants to go to kindergarten, he wished he could stay at Somacc forever. In case it’s helpful for anyone on the fence about starting school at this time, we have been very confident in the schools safety protocols. As a reformed germaphobe, I would not have sent my child back if I did not feel he was safe and it is now coming up on a full year he has been back safely in class. The children are very resilient, adaptable, and able to wear their masks all day. The rooms have extremely high ceilings and full doors allowing plenty of ventilation in addition to the air filters and hvac. Much of the children’s time is spent outdoors since the play yard is enormous and the classrooms each have a large balcony play area. The space is truly amazing and we’d all be lucky to spend all day in such a wide open sky/green grass area in the midst of downtown. Meals are individually sealed and no child ever goes home hungry. While the pandemic has meant that many of the great families moved away, new wonderful families have joined and my child has enjoyed getting to know all the little babies to all the older kids. We miss that the pandemic means we‘ve had to put a hold on the regular multi-age play yard activities, spring and fall festivals, Friday merry go round rides, all students school bus field trips across the Golden Gate Bridge and nighttime pizza parties (a.k.a.: parents group, dads group and parents committee meetings), but new school activities like letter writing to other classrooms, movie night, sing- a-long Saturdays, and planting in the gardens within the enormous play yard and next door at Yerba Buena Gardens took their place over time.