The University of Vermont administration has announced that a popular child care program on campus would close permanently.
The announcement comes on the heels of a temporary closure that went into effect in March when the Covid-19 pandemic took hold in Vermont. Parents learned Friday that the UVM Campus Children’s School will not reopen.
About 65 staff and faculty families relied on the program, which serves babies, toddlers and preschool children, according to parents who spoke with VTDigger.
The UVM Campus Children’s School was founded in 1937 and has served 2,200 UVM families over eight decades, according to the UVM website.
Scott Thomas, dean of the College of Education and Social Services, said in an email to parents that the decision “was reached after careful consideration by university administration, with the realization that the continued operation of the CCS by UVM is no longer sustainable.”
Tuition last year was roughly $14,600 a year per student. But Thomas said the campus school was subsidizing operations to the tune of $550,000 a year, and could no longer afford to do so, given budget challenges facing the university.
In addition, the school’s location in a student residence hall was deemed unsuitable for preventing the spread of Covid-19.
Lastly, the UVM Campus Children’s School was a training ground for students in the educational program at the university. Thomas said the school, however, “no longer serves a direct academic research need” for students in the Early Childhood Education Program.
“It is with a heavy heart that we announce this difficult decision,” Thomas wrote. “We know that the CCS has touched families in the UVM Community in innumerable positive ways over the past three decades. But the path forward became overwhelmingly clear in light of the circumstances we must now confront, and continuing the program is simply unsustainable.”
Thomas said the university will work with the Child Care Resource in Williston to help families find other child care options.
Loren Dow, a graduate student and UVM employee, said she and her husband, who is the head soccer coach at the university, were caught off guard by the abrupt decision. They had anticipated that the school would be reopened this week, after the governor announced that child care centers could again operate.
“We expected to hear about when they’d be opening, instead we learned they’d be closing,” Dow said.
She said it would be a challenge to find a placement for her 3-year-old son. “It’s such a challenging time and it’s really hard,” Dow said. She has joined a group of parents who are “respectfully requesting that this isn’t a permanent decision.”
“I don’t see how closing something with no plan for where people go is helpful with everything that’s happening now,” she said.
All three of Emily Manetta’s children have attended the program. Her now 12-year-old son was three months old when he first attended the campus school.
The child care program made it possible for Manetta and her husband to each pursue careers as academics at the university, she said. It’s one of the few places in the area that will take babies as young as six weeks old.
“It’s been a huge part of our lives since we decided to start a family,” Manetta said. Her daughter who was finishing her last year of preschool at the campus program will have to finish somewhere else. “We are scrambling to find an alternative while at the same time I’m sad for the loss of this part of our lives,” she said. “It seemed like a mainstay of the campus.”
Meaghan Emery, a professor whose daughter is an alum of the campus school, said parents are already struggling to find child care in Burlington. For every family that got a placement at the UVM Campus Children’s School, there are four to five that were rejected, she said. At one point the school contemplated expansion. She considers the program to be an essential service for the community.
“This is a terrible mistake,” Emery said. “With so little notice for parents over the summer it will be nearly impossible to find child care.”
The lack of input from UVM staff and faculty concerns Julie Roberts, the president of United Academics, the faculty union. She said the abrupt decision to close the school is the second unilateral budget cut made by UVM President Suresh Garimela and his administration in recent weeks.
UVM non-tenure lecturers in the College of Arts and Sciences and the Rubinstein School, who make about $60,000 a year, will see a 25% cut in salaries next year. Nevertheless, they are expected to carry full course loads the fall semester, and in the spring will teach a 50% course load, Roberts said. Now the lecturers, most of whom are women, won’t have daycare, either, she said.
“It keeps getting worse,” Roberts said. “My point is these cutbacks are of a piece.”
Roberts says the administration has refused to meet with the faculty to discuss a fair approach to cutting costs. “It’s here a cut, there a cut,” she said. “It’s haphazard without any systematic planning.”
UVM isn’t the only Vermont college closing its child care center. St. Michael’s College, the private liberal arts school in Colchester, announced in mid-May it would close its Early Learning Center. The on-campus child care facility served the children of staff, faculty, and area residents aged six weeks to six years.
In a message to parents about the school’s decision, Robert Robinson, St. Michael’s College Vice President of Finance, said the learning center had “operated at a significant loss for many years.”
“The College has confronted difficult financial realities over the past several years which have been exacerbated by COVID-19. Saint Michael’s is not alone in its current position, but we are cognizant that the year ahead will demand hard decisions and significant changes,” Robinson continued.
CORRECTION: Information about lecturer pay has been corrected.