Foss Swim School - Blaine

We have been coming to the Blaine FOSS since our eldest daughter was 6 months old. Our daughter loves water and she developed some good skills at FOSS. She’s 6 years old now. Facility is nice and employees are great, what’s not so great is, the evaluation system. I understand it’s some what subjective to who’s doing the evaluation, but the general goal shouldn’t be to maximize as much revenue as they possible can, rather considered your child’s skills. It feels like the pass/repeat/fail all depends on how many kids they have registered and if they have available room or not, definitely your child’s skill set isn’t the primary factor. Exhibit A: our daughter tried North Wolf swimming club and passed with flying colors. She just wasn’t used to the coach style learning and she was intimidated with coach yielding to other kids, she wasn’t ready for that. We decided to continue with FOSS. They kept her in the same class for 3 consecutive seasons and the excuses were, she needs to work on her “breathing” or she needs to work on her hands! This is a girl that swamped the whole Olympic size swimming pool back and forth for her try out! Later we discovered they didn’t have enough student registered for the next up session and the existing class is over capacity! Exhibit B: They placed a new student in their group, whom happens to be a girl my friend goes to school with. She never attended swimming lesson but she ended up in the same class as our daughter! Now you have kids with high varying degree in their skill sets and our daughter ends up not getting enough attention the instructor focuses more in monitoring others and helping others. I don’t like singling out employee as they get the over arching theme instructions from the corner offices, but Alexander, floor manager, took it to the next level when I tried to approach her with our over all concerns! Her general responses was, “you telling me your concern doesn’t change how we grade” paraphrased! So, this is our last session and we are taking our daughters to a different place where they can learn and excel!!

Overall, our daughter got a lot of value from her swim lessons at FOSS. The one thing I found disappointing was: when Foss did evaluations this year, their evaluator didn't take the time to watch our daughter swim. So we decided to attend the family swim to get specific feedback from their lead swim teachers, and it was really helpful. Apparently, the lead teachers at FOSS are continually watching students but those observations didn't get turned into student (or family) feedback.

My son is learning to swim quickly. He goes underwater but before he started lessons he didn't even like the water touching his face. So far we are very satisfied with how they teach and how patient and caring his instructor is.

This place is clean and filled with friendly swim instructors. My kiddo used to be terrified of the water. Now he loves swimming and can even jump into the pool's deep end. We love Foss!

Benyam Daniel I cannot agree more: rude customer service, rude manager and overworked and underpaid staff(teenagers). If i was Foss Management, i would fire all staff and get new people who care about kids and not about failing them for more Revenue. Such a shame!!! Honestly, Blaine is a good neighborhood.