There are so many great reasons to pick a co-op, including active parent involvement, flexibility, and community and support.

Glacier Way is a play-based learning preschool. You get to watch your child’s imagination, creativity, and curiosity come to life while interacting with other classmates.

Being part of a co-op means you get to be a part of your child’s first learning years. Watching how they make an idea come to life.

At Glacier Way we work hard to allow parents to assist with a schedule that works for them, whether you are a stay-at-home parent or parent who works full-time.

Arguably the best part of being part of a co-op? The amazing community and support that you will find in the other families. Not only does your child make everlasting friends, our parents become a little community supporting each other, setting up parent gatherings, and making new mom, dad, or guardian friends in the community. 

Absolutely not. We have families here at Glacier Way with all different work situations. Some families have a stay-at-home parent, but many families have two parents who both work full-time. It is entirely possible to be part of Glacier Way and still work full-time. We collaborate with you to make sure that your assist parent shifts work with your calendar.

Many families with two working parents balance the assist parent shifts between both parents. Some families recruit grandparents to help. Whatever your family situation, we would love to have you at Glacier Way.

It’s quite straightforward. You’ll fill out a form, then Glacier Way will send you a link to schedule the fingerprinting with a reputable 3rd party vendor at a time and location convenient for you. The appointment usually takes about 10 minutes (you’ll press your fingers onto a screen a few times), and then it takes several days to weeks for the background check to run.

If you are nervous at all, we encourage you to reach out and talk to a member. Come to one of our open houses or reach out to talk to us directly. We want to assuage your fears, being part of a co-op is not only manageable but more importantly… fun!

If you are concerned about the parent responsibilities , they are meant to be a small add-on each week or month, not a ‘part-time job.’ This is similar to most other co-op preschools.

If you’re reading this website because you’re excited to get more hands-on with your child’s development in a fun, supportive community of local families, then you’re in the right place and we’d love to chat more about your situation!

It is absolutely possible to start in the middle of the school year. We know that many children have later birthdays, but their parents do not want them to miss out on the chance to be in preschool setting with other children. We completely understand and want to facilitate that desire. So, yes, Glacier Way DOES allow mid-year start.

Please contact us to discuss options

It depends on Glacier Way’s current enrollment, as the responsibility is divided equally between the families in attendance. Usually, the math works out to 7-10 times or less per semester, or 2-3 times per month. The Glacier Way Secretary will specify the assist quota before the start of each semester.

Families often have multiple caregivers helping out. Each caregiver needs to get fingerprinted and pass a background check.

Note that while assisting in the classroom is a lot of fun, there are also some specific responsibilities and routines that require a short orientation the first time or two (e.g. health code dictates how we sanitize our snack tables). So, any family member who wants to help out needs to get briefed ahead of time and review some written instructions.

In addition to the short orientation, each caregiver, who will be volunteering in the classroom, is required, by the State of Michigan, to complete a short series of online, self-paced learning modules for health and safety. These are to ensure we are all well positioned to serve & support our children and families in the classroom. 

The Glacier Way Secretary will send out a sign-up calendar (a Google spreadsheet) to all enrolled families about a month before the start of each semester. Upon receiving that email, families may begin signing up for certain dates. Each class date has three spots for a caregiver to sign up (Assist Parent A, and Assist Parent B, and Back-up Parent).

While no dates are guaranteed, families are often very cooperative with each other to accommodate specific requests (e.g. “my child’s birthday is X, can I assist in the classroom that day”?). Parents are welcome to stay and participate in class on any given day even if they aren’t signed up as one of the two official helpers.

Usually, yes. If you’re having a baby or getting married or taking some sort of extended trip, it’s usually pretty easy to not sign up for those dates and instead assist more frequently the rest of the semester to make up for it. In tricky circumstances, you can speak with the Glacier Way Secretary and come up with a strategy to meet your assist quota while working around your conflict.

At Glacier Way every parent is asked to sign up for a specific number of Back-up Parent shifts (the number is determined by the length of the semester and the enrollment). The Back-up Parent is the parent who is “on-deck” in case of last minutes cancellations. If there is an unforeseen issue and the Back-up Parent is unavailable, Glacier Way has a communication protocol to find last-minute swaps and substitutions. Usually there are other families willing to help out in case of a last minute conflict or illness.

All parents play a small-to-medium-sized role or two behind the scenes to help keep the school running smoothly, and help keep costs (and tuition) lower. For some families, this is an hour or less per week. For others, it might be several hours a week, or several hours at once every few weeks. The Glacier Way Secretary will work with families to find a role that fits their strengths and commitment level upon enrollment.

To give you a sense of the types of jobs, they range from taking home classroom laundry (cleaning rags, smocks, parent aprons…), deep cleaning toy bins, planning field trips, organizing fundraisers, making homemade play dough, and serving on the board of directors. The latter requires a little greater time commitment but we encourage any families who are eager to play a more active role in the school’s operation, financial health, membership relations, and social media/marketing to sign up.

Unfortunately, no. Every family is expected to help in the classroom and run the school outside of the classroom. While each parent job may be different, Glacier Way is founded on the spirit of ‘we’re all in this together.’ Plus, we think the parent community that organically grows out of volunteering together and caring for each others’ children makes our school a more special place for everyone.

Nope. We ask families to consider participating in fundraisers to the extent they are able, but do not set any specific per-family fundraising quota that must be met. Glacier Way tries to organize fundraisers that add value to enrolled families and our easily shareable with friends and family (e.g. holiday wreath sales; pizza night at a local restaurant).

There are two ways that we can handle your Application Fee at the end of the school year. You get to decide which one best suits you.

Option #1:

You can elect to donate your Application Fee to our Scholarship & Hardship Fund. This will help benefit families who need help with their tuition costs or have run into unexpected hardship.

Option #2:

You can elect to have your Application Fee refunded to you at the end of the school year.