Ryan Rowland

08/13/2024

0.5

I am writing this because I didn't listen to others when they approached us at the skate park, nor did I listen to the reviews on here. Our child took lessons with Dayton for almost one year. He was fine at teaching the basics and helped get our kid into skating. This summer, we signed up for a skate "camp" with Dayton. To our disappointment, the "camp" ended up being the kids sitting on a picnic table for four hours, and skating with no instruction for the last hour. One of the days, when our 7-year-old had to use the bathroom, Dayton was very dismissive and mean. When our child's mother said something to him, Dayton went off on her and proceeded to say, "you are expelled and I'm keeping all of your money." We had just purchased a $600 package of private lessons, and we hoped that Dayton would still show up the next weekend for the lesson. However, as my 7-year-old approached him to start the lesson, he proceeded to leave the skate park and will not return any of our texts our calls. Essentially, he has taken $600 from us and refused to provide the lessons. I hope people read this and understand what will likely happen if you use Sk8boardSchool. Things may seem okay at first - yes, for almost a year we looked past Dayton being 5-10 minutes late to every lesson and then often trying to sell other people while we were in the middle of our $60 per hour private lesson. When your kid starts to work on a new skill, Dayton will insist that you buy additional lessons because "we can't keep working on this without more lessons in the bank." It's disappointing to see people acting this unprofessional, and also disappointing having someone steal $600 from us - but what's worse is that my 7-year-old kid now says he's worried about seeing "coach" at the skate park and that he will say something mean to him. UPDATE on August 10, 2024 - We confronted Dayton about getting our $600 back, and he proceeded to call my wife a "bad mother" and tell me that I was "going to jail" - all in front of our three children (ages 7, 5, and 3). I also learned that he is not even allowed to do lessons at the Encinitas Community Park as he does not have the permit with the parks & recreation department. PLEASE DO NOT LET YOUR CHILDREN NEAR HIM.