Temperatures rose above 90 degrees in northern Vermont last month, but PJ’s Childcare in St. Albans nevertheless announced a new dress code for the children in their care: shoulder straps needed to be at least 1-inch wide.
The new rule annoyed Briana Adams, mom to 2-year-old Kenzie, who had spent upwards of $200 to outfit her daughter for the summer. Fuming about this and another incident, Adams turned to the internet.
“It’s hot as hell,” Adams wrote on the program’s Facebook page. “I’m taking this as sexualization of my child which I definitely am not happy with. If they want my daughter dressed a certain way they can pay for her clothes.”
The next day, Penny Spaulding, the center’s owner, confronted Adams about the review, defended the center’s policy, and threatened to terminate Kenzie’s enrollment.
“We have 10-, 11-, 12- 13-year-old boys here. And other girls here. Do you want other kids to be looking at your daughter? Not me. They’re going to,” Spaulding said, according to a video recording of the encounter Adams provided to VTDigger.
The following Tuesday, Adams’ friend, who was picking up Kenzie, was handed a notice the child care would disenroll the 2-year-old. The termination letter said the center had a “no tolerance policy for expletive language,” that the center’s clothing policy was not being followed, and also cited a “lack of parental cooperation.”
Spaulding said she still stands by the decision.
“She didn’t get kicked out, she got let go because she was going against my policies and she did sign binding contracts,” Spaulding said in a combative interview with VTDigger, in which she also accused Adams of “slander.”
“I didn’t do anything. I haven’t done anything. I never said that boys were looking at her kid. That’s a downright lie,” she said, vowing to “get her for that.” Spaulding also threatened VTDigger.
“There’s not going to be an article put out on me, it’s not going to happen. Or we will go after you guys as well,” she added moments before hanging up the phone.
Child care licensing regulations appear to give providers quite a bit of latitude where enrollment is concerned. It’s likely that Spaulding was, indeed, generally within her rights to remove Kenzie from her program, although she may have been out of bounds on a few technicalities. State rules do say providers must give parents five days’ notice, and “develop and implement a plan to address concerns, with the goal of continuing the child’s enrollment,” before moving to expulsion.
Adams was given notice on July 6, and told Kenzie’s last day would be July 9. The letter also warned that the 2-year-old’s remaining days of care would be cut short immediately should there be “any more slander and/or deformation [sic] of character.”
There is no state-level data collected about expulsion from child care centers, according to the Department for Children and Families, except where preschool-aged children are concerned. But national research indicates that young children are kicked out of child care and preschool settings three times as often as school-age kids, according to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services.
Early childhood education settings, meanwhile, have largely been left out of the evolving conversations around the damaging effects of exclusionary discipline on children. This year, Vermont went as far as to ban suspensions and expulsions for kids under 8. But the new law only applies to public schools, not child care providers or private schools.
Having so few guardrails is a problem, said Rachel Seelig, a staff attorney at Vermont Legal Aid’s disability law project. Even when providers are receiving taxpayer funds — either through the state’s universal preK law, or via subsidies for low-income families — child care centers have a “tremendous amount of discretion” about who they expel and why.
Adams’ 2-year-old was kicked out over a disagreement about the center’s dress code. But the leeway providers enjoy can also be particularly problematic for a different subset of kids: those with disabilities.
Karen Price, the executive director of the Vermont Family Network, said exclusion from child care is a perennial concern. VFN had even scheduled a webinar on the subject, pre-Covid, that was canceled by the pandemic.
Price emphasized that children with disabilities who are not old enough for school are still entitled to services, which they can access through the state’s Children Integrated Services program. But while kids are legally entitled to state services, they aren’t entitled or guaranteed child care. And with such a shortage of providers, Price said, programs know they’ll have no trouble filing a slot if they send a child away.
“If you can pick and choose the easier children — I would say it happens,” she said.
In one case, Seelig said she’d worked with a family whose child was pushed out of a program simply for arriving after the designated drop-off time. (The child in question was receiving specialized services at another location.)
“Children can be kicked out without any due process, any appeal rights, any real recourse. Short of being a member of a protected class, and being able to file some kind of discrimination complaint, there’s really not much that families can do,” Seelig said.
