Latest news with #GuidepostMontessori
Yahoo
11-04-2025
- Yahoo
Oklahoma janitor accused of hiding cameras in TV station, school restrooms faces Peeping Tom charges
A janitor was accused Friday in a felony charge of hiding video cameras in air vents in restrooms at an Oklahoma City television station and a school. Miguel Angel Sierra-Meza was charged in Oklahoma County District Court with 28 Peeping Tom counts. He can be seen in videos from the cameras placing the devices in the vents at KOCO-TV and Guidepost Montessori at Brasswood, an Oklahoma City police detective reported in an court affidavit. Police reported 26 victims were identified from the videos. Two were children. The first recording device was discovered when a television station employee on March 31 noticed dust falling onto her lap from the ceiling, according to the affidavit. The employee was in the stall of the women's restroom at the time. The victim looked up, noticed the device in the vent and notified her bosses, the detective reported. The second device was found in the staff restroom at the school after police began checking other businesses. Sierra-Meza, 38, of Oklahoma City, was arrested April 1 when a cleaning crew returned April 1 to the television station. He remains in the Oklahoma County jail. He has no attorney listed yet in court records to contact for comment. Guidepost Montessori at Brasswood is in north Oklahoma City. It is one of more than 150 campuses in cities across the world providing education to children, according to the company's website. In an April 2 email, a Guidepost Montessori senior regional manager told parents and staff that the contract with the janitorial services vendor had been terminated. Police confirmed that adults, and not children, were the likely targets and "that this was very likely a solo operation," the senior regional manager wrote. One of the victims at Guidepost Montessori already has hired Oklahoma City attorney Cameron Spradling. He is planning to sue City Wide Facility Solutions, a national company. The attorney alleges Sierra-Meza was in the country illegally and was hired as a janitor because of negligent vetting practices. "No organization can be allowed to endanger the public by placing convenience and cost savings over human safety," the attorney said. Steve Carroll, owner of City Wide's Oklahoma City operation, said the individual was an employee of a subcontractor. "Our thoughts and prayers go out to the folks that were affected by this," Carroll said. "It's very unfortunate but the gentleman who is charged is not an employee of City Wide Facility Solutions." The crime of Peeping Tom becomes a felony rather than a misdemeanor in Oklahoma when recording equipment is used for "prurient, lewd or lascivious purpose." This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Janitor accused of hiding cameras in restrooms at OKC TV station, school
Yahoo
19-03-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Opinion: Families and Providers Deserve More Notice When Child Care Programs Close
Imagine getting an email that your favorite restaurant has decided to close at the end of the month. That's sad, but not life-changing news. Now imagine getting an email that your kid's child care center is closing down in a few weeks — or worse, being met with a padlock at drop off. That's a five-alarm fire. One little-noted consequence of America's ongoing decision to treat child care as a market commodity like a restaurant is that customers (in this case, young children and their families) often get little to no notice before their world is turned upside down. That should change. Abrupt closures are the reality for far too many early care and education programs. In recent months, Guidepost Montessori, a network of more than 130 Montessori-inspired child care programs and schools serving children ages birth to 18, has shuttered more than 16 sites and is on track to closing around one-third due to financial struggles and an inability to pay rent; in each of these cases, parents and educators have gotten at most a month's notice. Some received an email the night before landlords changed the locks. The short-notice aspect of child care closures is not limited to for-profit chains. Independent, community-based, and nonprofit programs also frequently provide meager notice. In February, Thrive Early Learning Academy, an independent center near San Antonio, Texas closed with zero warning, with the owner writing that due to staffing challenges, 'It is with a heavy heart that we announce the temporary closure of Thrive, effective immediately.' Last year, Rockford Day Nursery, a 100-year-old center in Illinois had a similarly sudden closure, as did the program attached to Salem Baptist Church in the small South Carolina town of Aynor. Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter A sudden child care closure can create immense stress for parents and staff. In 2024, Molly Dickens, a stress physiologist, co-authored an op-ed with reproductive psychiatrist Lucy Hutner in which the pair recounted the story of Julia Sachdev, a mother of two young children who got an email that her kids' preschool was closing in a month. They wrote: ''It was so stressful,' reflected Ms. Sachdev. 'There was this suffocating anxiety that ruled my day. I couldn't concentrate on other things. It kept me up at night.'' Dickens and Hutner noted the negative effects of chronic stress on parents and children, and also cited research that child care precarity — a state of insecure and unreliable child care — 'has been linked to negative mental health outcomes for mothers for at least six years afterward.' They underscored that 'Unpredictability itself is a source of stress. Even when parents manage to secure care for their children, it can be unreliable, and they never know when it might go away.' The reasons for rapid child care closures vary. In some cases, as with Guidepost, it may be financial problems leading to nonpayment of rent or other business failures. In other cases, as with Thrive Learning Academy, a lack of staffing means the program cannot legally operate. And in others, circumstances may be beyond a program's control, as when a landlord decides not to renew a lease. While it is instructive to compare the closure of child care programs to the closure of public schools, it's important to recognize that this is a case where the lack of a public system really rears its head. A public school closure typically involves a months- to years-long process that is often painful and requires a large amount of meetings and discussion. That's not the case for most child care programs. The government cannot force a private business or even a nonprofit to stay open indefinitely, and the overwhelming majority of child care programs in the U.S. fall into these categories. That doesn't mean, however, that there are no public policy tools. Related First, it's important to note that if a private business that serves a social function is closing, the government often requires reasonable notice. Banks are a good example: The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation legally requires banks to give customers 90 days notice prior to closing a branch. Skilled nursing facilities, too, must provide at least 60 days notice and a plan for relocating residents, as mandated by the Department of Health and Human Services. Another challenge is that unlike other industries, there is no rescue mechanism for failing early care and education programs — but there could be. When systemically important companies are risking closure, the government often steps in. For example, when big financial institutions and car companies were flailing during the 2008 fiscal crisis, the federal government provided a bailout. When a public school district's financial situation is dire enough, it typically enters state receivership, meaning the state takes over governing authority in exchange for filling the funding gap, as has happened in districts such as Oakland Unified and Detroit Public Schools. In short, if the social impact of a given service failing is significant enough, the compelling public interest for government intervention is well-established. While a mom-and-pop child care center or even a medium-sized chain like Guidepost Montessori doesn't rise to the level of systemic importance as a General Motors, they provide critical support to families and children, and when one of them closes, it has rippling impacts on entire communities. Yet there's currently no public recourse whatsoever in child care. There is no established mechanism for Colorado or its cities, for instance, to step in and purchase the shuttering Guidepost facilities at a discount, turning their operations over to a trusted nonprofit or community-based organization. This is an area ripe for policy entrepreneurship — surely some type of mechanism such as a trust fund or loan fund could be established that would keep the centers' doors open, even if the ownership changes hands. There are other potential policy actions. While the difference between 30, 60 or 90 days isn't massive when you're talking about the supply scarcity that marks child care, states requiring a more robust amount of notice to families and staff would at least offer more breathing room to seek alternative arrangements. And if there were more protections in place to ensure that landlords leasing their spaces to child care programs had to give more notice if they planned not to renew — say 6 months — that could offer program leaders a more reasonable runway to find a solution. Finally, program failures do not happen out of the blue. There are typically early warning signals along the way. If states established — or improved — the lines of communication with child care programs and offered guidelines or requirements around how to share these warning signals sooner, there would be more time for states to implement supportive strategies to help struggling providers. For example, regulations could be put in place to require licensed programs to alert the state when a staffing shortage reaches a critical level in which one or two more departures will drop them below the legal minimum, forcing a closure of classrooms or the entire site. For this issue, states might consider having an 'emergency pool' of retired directors and educators who could be called on to maintain operations until the situation is resolved. Similarly, large chain programs could be required to share audited financial statements with the state on an annual basis so that the state has a sense of their general financial health and risk of collapse, given the outsize impact of multisite closures. There are various levers to pull, but the status quo is untenable and policy change is needed. Families and child care educators deserve the confidence and peace of mind that the rug is not going to be suddenly pulled out from under them, and young children deserve maximum caregiver stability that promotes their healthy development. We've allowed sudden closures to be a fact of life in the U.S. child care system for far too long. That's a policy choice; it's time to make a different one.
Yahoo
10-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Preschool company abruptly closes three of its central Ohio locations
COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) — With just weeks' notice, multiple central Ohio preschools under the same company are closing by the end of the month, leaving employees and families with little time to adjust. Guidepost Montessori is closing three of its four central Ohio locations by March 31. Nationwide, the company has closed almost 50 of its more than 150 schools with minimal notice. An administrator said the situation has been 'miserable.' 'We have parents begging us to do something,' she said. Alumni societies pull donations after Ohio State cuts diversity officies The administrator — who asked to be anonymous as she is staying with the school until its closure — said staff learned the schools would close on Feb. 25. Guidepost locations at Dublin, Muirfield Village and Powell will close, with the Worthington location remaining open. Although Guidepost and its parent company, Higher Ground Education, had significant financial backing from groups like LearnCapital and the Walton Foundation, its rapid expansion appeared to overtake the costs needed to maintain its schools. Higher Ground's CEO and founder also resigned in the last two weeks, adding to the confusion. Interim co-CEO Maris Mendes said via internal newsletter that the company's overextension has led them to close nearly a third of the company's schools. All closing Columbus locations provided care for kids between 12 weeks and 6 years old. Guidepost Montessori's website does not indicate these locations are closing and still invites families to reach out. The Muirfield Village webpage says the school is accepting applications for infant through kindergarten programs. Community plan aims to revitalize Eastland Mall property Guidepost schools across the country are affected. News outlets have reported closures in at least 10 states this year. In October, Guidepost's missed rent payments at a facility in Virginia led to the building's landlord locking the doors without warning. Dozens of workers and families were left without access, and news outlets reported children's and teacher's belongings were locked inside. In a letter to Denver television station KMGH, Guidepost Montessori said the specialized education, training and educational materials are expensive. The representative said many schools were running losses of $50,000 per month and that the company's creditors were no longer willing to bend. Financial reports for the company are difficult to track down, as they only have four SEC filings and are not a nonprofit, so their tax documents are not readily available. The most recent public data comes from lease agreements, where Guidepost was reported to be nearly doubling its revenue each year through 2022. Father behind Lauren's Law in Ohio sues disability care facility after eviction The administrator said she wished the company had given them at least a few months' notice. She said Montessori schooling, which emphasizes independence in learning, is a niche educational experience, which makes it harder to bounce back from the closures. 'Now there's faculty scrambling to find employment, because Montessori is so specific,' she said. She said families are also struggling to find new childcare options, as the Worthington location had minimal openings. Among the three locations, there are 91 students left without childcare, according to the schools' most recent state inspections. Using that same data, even if the Worthington location enrolled kids to its maximum legal capacity, at least 16 would still need a new school. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
05-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Opinion: A Rapid Succession of Child Care Closures Calls for Close Scrutiny
The closure of a child care program can be devastating to children, families and the early educators who staff them. When a number of programs owned and operated by the same company — often referred to as a child care chain — start closing in rapid succession, it becomes cause for alarm and deserves attention. That's what's happening with Guidepost Montessori, as multiple sites around the country are closing. This episode, which is one of the first illustrations in the U.S. of what can happen when a for-profit child care chain goes sideways, calls for close scrutiny. Guidepost Montessori is a network of more than 130 Montessori-inspired child care programs and schools serving children ages birth to 18, with most programs focusing on children under 6 years old, according to its website. Most sites are located in the U.S., with some abroad. The network is owned and operated by Higher Ground Education, an education management company that is backed by tens of millions of dollars in venture capital funding. Higher Ground Education pursues what one of its funders refers to as a 'hyper-scaling' approach, and founder and CEO Ray Girn (who recently resigned) once drew an explicit analogy to Airbnb, telling EdSurge in 2020, 'I think that there is an opportunity to achieve [with Guidepost] what ride-sharing apps or Airbnb have achieved: show the world another way of doing education at a sufficient scale.' Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter Yet just since the beginning of 2025, at least 16 closures have been reported by local news outlets: Guidepost has announced closures of all five active sites in Colorado (and paused a sixth site that was slated to open) as well as three sites in Ohio, two in Iowa, two in Minnesota, and sites in Missouri, Oklahoma, Virginia, and Wisconsin. These closures follow others that occurred abruptly last year in Virginia and in Oregon (the latter allegedly as a response to staff unionization attempts). Importantly, these are just the known closures that have been publicly reported in the news. In a Feb. 28 post on the Higher Ground Education Substack, where the company shares weekly memos, new co-CEO Maris Mendes acknowledged that the company is 'in the midst of closing nearly 1/3 of the school communities that have so lovingly been built over the past 9 years.' According to Mendes, the driving force behind the closures is the same hyper-scaling strategy Higher Ground's investors saw as a selling point; she writes that, 'In our eagerness to meet the vast vision of our mission, we overextended ourselves, growing our school network beyond what we could effectively support, both financially and operationally.' Specifically, the company is struggling to pay rent to landlords. Last year, two Guidepost Montessori sites in Northern Virginia closed after reportedly missing multiple rent payments, spurring the landlords to change the locks. In December 2024, Guidepost lost a civil judgment in Missouri for nearly $240,000 in non-payment of rent and 'unlawful detainer' of the premises by Guidepost. Similarly, in a letter to Denver ABC 7 about the Colorado closures, Guidepost asserted that 'Our organization struggled to raise the capital necessary to support our schools, the majority of which were still recovering [from the pandemic], and suffering major losses. At many schools, we were running losses of $50,000+ per month that our creditors were no longer willing to subsidize, and we've had to figure out how to manage. In some cases, our landlords have been able to help us navigate these difficulties. They have generously provided rent relief, or renegotiated lease terms, in order to help an individual school to overcome its challenges and reach a point of financial sustainability. In other cases, that hasn't been possible.' The pandemic point is an interesting one. The pandemic certainly threw many child care programs for a loop, but it's worth observing that Guidepost raised $70 million in equity through two funding rounds in January and April of 2021 and continued to open new sites at a rapid clip, suggesting an aggressive strategy despite the pandemic rather than one hobbled by it. The trouble Guidepost finds itself in is reminiscent of other child care chain collapses or near-collapses outside of the U.S. As I wrote last year, large chains like Australia's ABC Learning and the Netherlands' Estro Group previously saw rapid and widespread closures due to financial mismanagement or overly aggressive growth. While much more remains to be investigated, Guidepost may be on the path toward becoming one of America's most significant child care collapses. It's unclear what the outcome will be for the network, but it's certainly worth asking questions about how and why this happened, whether there are any problematic trends that reach beyond Guidepost and pose risks for other chains, and what can be done to stop a company relied on by so many families and educators from getting in this type of mess in the first place.
Yahoo
23-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Montessori group to close 2 Minnesota schools amid nationwide closures
A company that operates private Montessori schools is closing multiple locations across the country, including its two schools in Minnesota. The pages for Guidepost Montessori schools in Roseville and White Bear Lake have been scrubbed from the company's website, with an email to families confirming both will be closed by the end of March. The letter also confirmed Guidepost is abandoning its plans to open new schools in Eagan and Apple Valley. "In short, the organization's ability and runway to embrace and tackle the enrollment and financial obstacles at these locations has shortened," the email read. "To be clear, this decision does not reflect any failure or lack of effort of our school leadership and staff. They have been working immensely hard to build thriving educational communities and deserve our admiration and recognition for their efforts. We are simply at a pass where we must recognize that we cannot sustain these particular locations in our long-term portfolio of schools after continued enrollment and financial challenges." The letter says Guidepost will "redirect our time, energy, and resources to the other schools in our network that are long-term sustainable." Guidepost Montessori added that it intends to provide transitional resources for families left looking for a new school. KSTP, which first reportedthe Minnesota closures, says the White Bear Lake location has a capacity for 52 children, while the Roseville location has a capacity for 74 children. There have also been reports that Guidepost Montessori is closing multiple locations in Colorado and Iowa. Guidepost describes itself as "the world's largest global Montessori network," saying it has more than 130 locations across the globe.
