Bright Horizons at The Columbia Federal Center

Reviews

• JK

  Justin Kier

  6 days ago
  5.0
  We have had two daughters attend Bright Horizons. The staff has always been friendly, helpful, and caring towards our daughters. They did an excellent job of preparing our oldest for elementary school. We went through COVID with their team, and when our oldest graduated there were genuinely tears from all. I would recommend BH to parents in the Columbia area. No daycare is perfect, but they do genuinely care about the kids/do their best. Take some of the negative reviews you read with a big grain of salt. Thank you, Bright Horizons staff!
• CS

  Clarissa Salas

  Aug 26, 2025
  5.0
  My daughter attended this school for 1s,2s, 3s, and a few months in 4k. I then transferred her to a 4k program in the elementary school she will be attending. The teachers here are amazing and really prepared my daughter for success in her academic journey. My daughter learned how to write her name by age 3. She went into 4k knowing how to count to 20. She also knew her shapes and numbers. She also knew how to sing her ABCs, hold a pencil, and use the scissors. This program also set her up socially because she knows how to share and ask others if they want to play. She also knows how to ask for help and follow directions in the classroom setting. I am so thankful for this amazing program.
• NJ

  Nicole Jamison

  Aug 21, 2025
  4.0
  My experience with Bright Horizon was exceptional. All the staff were great and always provided open lines of communication about everything with my daughter. My daughter really enjoyed her experience there and loved her teachers. I wish the school went up to a higher grade level so my daughter could continue her education experience there.
• CC

  Cassandra Clark

  Jul 15, 2025
  1.0
  NOT A SAFE PLACE FOR LGBTQ+ CHILDREN. Please please please stay away if that is applicable to you. This facility caused my daughter and our family much distress and heartbreak. I will start by saying that some of the teachers here are loving and wonderful. We had been with the center for two years before finally leaving due to the discrimination against my daughter. My infant son started care at under a year old, however, and he was always treated with kindness and got lucky to be with the best teachers. But the problems with treatment of my daughter were many. She is AMAB, and she goes by a new name and she/her pronouns. My little girl skipped in to class each day with her friendly, joyful attitude, wearing desses in all kinds of colors. It was very very obvious to anyone that this was a little girl. But the center refused to respect her choice of pronouns, citing that it was "against the staff members' rights" to use my daughter's chosen pronouns and names. Daily, she was met with a snear from her mean teacher and a greeting using her dead name. Most of her classmates understood who she was and loved her, but I witnessed on more than one occasion her teacher telling the entire classroom, "This is a boy. We are not allowed to call them a girl!" and reprimanded the children who used her chosen name. I begged multiple times for her teachers to at the very least use her correct name on her artwork. Even this was denied to us. Every day, my child was forced to hang up her backpack in a cubby labeled with a boy's name. Every day she came home with her own artwork she worked hard on defaced with her dead name written by her teachers. It was humiliating and heartbreaking for her. Some staff members and most of the other families showed open disdain at the sight of my family. There was one occasion in specific where we ran into my daughter's friend and her mother on the way in to the center. My daughter excitedly greeted her classmate, and the mother psychically pulled the child away from us. I had multiple meetings with the director about the families' treatment of us, the food problems, and my daughter's mean teacher. I talked about the unnecessary humiliation of the teacher repeatedly ordering the class to call her a boy, about the dead name I had to use white out to cover up that the teacher wrote on her artwork every day, and about how my daughter was not allowed to call herself by her correct name even though her classmates had their chosen nicknames written on their own cubbies rather than their birth names. Why was it okay for the teachers to use "Gigi" instead of Giovanni, but not my daughter's chosen name? I kept getting told that Bright Horizons was inclusive, and they loved my child, and everything I was worried about was dismissed. The other big issue we had was food. The center serves snacks and one cooked meal for lunch. My kids are picky eaters, and they hated the food served, but that's okay. I opted to pack lunch from home instead. The problem was there were no consistent rules about what could be packed in lunchboxes. My son could pack whatever he wanted so long as it didn't have nuts. My daughter's K-prep teacher, the mean one I mention throughout this review, had her own specific rules about what my daughter could have for lunch. She said there could be no "unhealthy" food. As someone with an ED, I recognized right away how dangerous this could be. This teacher's definitions of what were healthy foods were completely subjective to her own opinions, and they changed all the time. My daughter was not supposed to bring chips, or at least that's what the teacher said, but then sometimes the children would be served chips as snacks. When I brought this up, the teacher said, well, the chips we gave them are healthy, and the ones your daughter brings are not. My daughter would often come home with her lunchbox still full because she hadn't been allowed to eat it because it was too "unhealthy". I fought hard for her to be treated fairly, but in the end, we gave up.
• NC

  Nikki Cambridge

  Aug 6, 2024
  1.0
  While the program has several benefits, my daughter stay getting sick here, refused to eat the family style food (another reason she continued to get sick, why would you feed 1 year olds family style without expecting them to get sick), and the director is extremely combative to discourage parents from speaking out. I would find another center for sure.

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