Mount Holyoke College’s announcement last month began with a clear mission statement: “As an institution founded with women at the center of the educational experience, our commitment to supporting employees with childcare needs is resolute.”
Yet the notice delivered the exact opposite message. The college, it said, would be closing its campus child-care program, Gorse Children’s Center, within four months. Two dozen early educators — all women — would lose the jobs that some had just returned to after months of furlough. Eighty families, including some faculty and many unaffiliated residents of the surrounding South Hadley community, would need new babysitters by July.
“The first thing I did was panic,” said Jessica Maier, associate professor of art history and a mother of three. The next was to call other area child-care providers, only to discover a dearth of alternatives. At one center, she was number 50 on a waitlist.
Her next move was to push back at Mount Holyoke, pointing out an exquisite irony: The oldest of the Seven Sisters colleges, founded with a mission of women’s empowerment, was making it harder for women to go to work.
And it was happening at the worst possible time. Almost a year into a pandemic, many women have been forced out of the workplace or are crumpling under the pressure of working from home beside their children. Child care is scarcer and even more unaffordable, threatening working mothers’ jobs and creating economic pressures so worrisome that state and federal policymakers are pushing for major reforms. The town of South Hadley had 15 licensed child-care providers before the pandemic began last spring, according to the state Department of Early Education and Care. Only 10 have reopened.
“This just compounded the shortage of day-care openings we had in the area,” said Allison B. Lepper, a South Hadley mother who sends her son to the campus child-care center. “They either weren’t aware of it, or they didn’t meaningfully evaluate the effect this decision would have on compounding that problem.”
Lepper, who went to Gorse herself as a child of a Mount Holyoke administrator, launched an online community petition that collected 1,000 signatures within 48 hours and ultimately topped 1,500. Maier drafted a petition signed by about 150 Mount Holyoke faculty and staff.
“What we found with the huge outpouring of support is that, pretty much across the board, the broader community agreed that this center was an example of a tangible way Mount Holyoke contributes to the community,” said Lepper.
One week, one protest, and several news stories later, Mount Holyoke president Sonya Stephens apologized and offered a temporary reprieve. Mount Holyoke agreed to extend its contract with operator Bright Horizons Family Solutions for one more year, keeping the Gorse Children’s Center open through June 2022.
“As president, I take full responsibility for these errors, for the decision and for the enormous stress and turmoil it has caused,” Stephens wrote. “First among these mistakes was our decision to suspend early childhood education at Gorse without a clear plan for continuity of care.”
A spokeswoman for Mount Holyoke declined to answer specific questions, referring the Globe to the college’s earlier public announcements and issuing a prepared statement.
“Childcare and early education is a concern for families across the Commonwealth and across the country. Mount Holyoke College is, like many organizations, grappling with this issue,” the statement said. “Securing an extension of our contract with our external partner ensures continuation of care as we further study on-campus childcare offerings at the College.”
Still, parents are keeping up the public pressure on Mount Holyoke, concerned that day-care teachers will flee for more stable alternatives if the future of the child-care center is unresolved. On Monday night, marking International Women’s Day, they staged a march calling for a long-term plan for preserving the child-care center.
Initially, Mount Holyoke said it was closing Gorse because so few of its employees used on-campus child care, and few of them were taking advantage of scholarships available to those with household income under $85,000.
“This inequity in the distribution of resources allocated to subsidizing child care simply cannot continue,” Mount Holyoke said in its first message. The college said it would stop spending $325,000 on a center that benefited so few and instead devote $100,000 to a child-care fund that employees could use anywhere.
Parents weren’t buying it.
“Equity means shutting down day care for everyone instead of making it available for everyone?” said Maier.
Elif Babül, an associate professor of Anthropology, noted that the pandemic had temporarily driven down enrollment.
“The numbers they were basing their decisions on were artificially reduced numbers,” she said. Further, she said, many Mount Holyoke parents had no idea that scholarships were even available, and human resources didn’t promote them. One of those with a scholarship, a postdoctoral fellow, told the Globe she only learned about it from her faculty supervisor when she balked at Gorse’s regular tuition rates.
Toddler care at Gorse Children’s Center typically costs about $1,544 a month, or $18,528 a year. That’s on par with other Pioneer Valley child-care centers. But Gorse Children’s Center is fully accredited and provides infant care, which other area providers increasingly do not.
Lillian Krause-Ely, the owner of nearby Brighter Beginnings Child Care, said that after pandemic lockdown, she reopened without an infant room, rather than juggle new COVID restrictions. In addition, other child-care centers’ toddler and preschool rooms are full, and some have waitlists of up to two years.
“There is such a dire need in this area that sometimes I get up to four phone calls in one day,” said Krause-Ely.
In addition to full child care, Gorse also provides before-school and after-school care. Drop-in care is available so parents can attend faculty meetings, even if their children are not regularly enrolled, and faculty mothers like Maier are able to pop in during the day to nurse, a convenience that can enable them breastfeed longer.
“Onsite child care is one of the most important things you can do to ensure the participation of women in the workforce in order for them to thrive in workforce,” said Babül. “It’s like that across the board for all kinds of sectors but particularly in academia.”
As a result, she said of the college’s initial plan to close the children’s center, “This is a very anti-women decision.”
Universities have gotten into trouble before trying to cut costs. When the University of Massachusetts Boston sought to close a massive budget gap in 2017, the child-care center was the first to go, infuriating parents.
Parents and community members said they do not intend to let up on the fight to keep Gorse, which Mount Holyoke has considered closing at least twice since the 1990s.
“Everyone came together and made the point that child care is a common good. It is something that benefits everyone,” said Babül.
Stephanie Ebbert can be reached at Stephanie.Ebbert@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @StephanieEbbert.
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