05-02-2025
Parents band together to urge FCC to keep child care center open
On Thursday evening, Jenna Maly received a notification from the app the Carl and Norma Miller Children's Center at Frederick Community College uses to communicate with parents.
Maly and her husband have two children enrolled at the center — a daughter who's 2 1/2 years old and a son who's almost a year old.
Maly's husband called her over and told her to check her phone. She said she was extremely nervous to look at the notification.
She saw a letter from FCC President Annesa Payne Cheek announcing the impending closure of the children's center on May 16 due to financial difficulties. In the fall of 2025, the facility will be reopened as a workforce development training center.
To give the center's staff time to process the news, since they were told about it earlier Thursday night, the facility would be closed on Friday, the letter said.
"I have been emotional all weekend about it, crying, just anger," Maly said. "It didn't feel like a great way to be told this news."
The Carl and Norma Miller Children's Center at FCC opened more than 30 years ago and provides year-round services for children ages 6 weeks to 5 years old.
Its total capacity is 83 children. Currently, 69 children are enrolled, according to a statement FCC sent to The Frederick News-Post on Friday.
The U.S. is currently facing a national child care crisis, and Frederick County has already felt those impacts.
A 2024 study on child care availability and demand in the county found that the number of available licensed child care slots in the county isn't keeping up with the demand.
If that trend continues, the shortage of care could reach crisis levels in the next 10 years. Some parts of the county are already at or approaching crisis levels.
In her letter to parents, Cheek said the center has faced ongoing financial losses in its operations.
From fiscal year 2020 to fiscal year 2024, the Children's Center had a net income loss of $1.3 million, according to FCC's statement. Even with a $250,000 subsidy Frederick County set aside for the center for fiscal year 2023, the center's net income loss still exceeded $1 million.
"With the current financial environment, any operation that consistently sustains financial loss must be reevaluated, and this includes the Children's Center," Cheek wrote in her letter.
Maly is one of the 50 parents who currently have children enrolled at the children's center.
She's also one of the people fighting to keep the center open.
In the days since FCC announced it would be closing the children's center, advocates have created a petition to keep the center open and a Facebook group called "Save Frederick's Community Childcare Service."
The petition, created on Jan. 31, had more than 380 signatures as of Tuesday night. The Facebook group was created Monday and had 24 members as of Tuesday afternoon.
Avis Boyd, Cheek's chief of staff, confirmed receipt on Tuesday of questions The Frederick News-Post had for Cheek, including if she had comment on parents who've reached out with concerns, the petition to keep the center open, and the Save Frederick's Community Childcare Service Facebook group.
In a statement to The Frederick News-Post, Cheek said, "I appreciate the community voices and praise for the quality of service and care provided by the employees of our Children's Center. At the same time, childcare is not our core business."
"FCC's primary focus is education, training and workforce preparation," she said. "My decision to better leverage the College's resources to meet current and emerging workforce needs, supports that focus."
'We are so devastated'
The parent patrons of the children's center have experienced a range of emotions since hearing the center will be closed — betrayal, anger, grief, confusion.
Maly said she and her husband both work full-time, and they began using the center's services in 2023 when they enrolled their daughter.
At the time, she had reached out to 50 at-home child care providers and 20 child care centers. FCC's children's center was one of three facilities that had openings.
Maly said the center was "an instant match for us." She said the staff was warm and welcoming, the surrounding green space was a plus, and the center's location on the campus made it feel safer.
It was also one of the more affordable child care options that she and her husband looked at.
"My children both absolutely thrive there. We are so devastated at this announcement," she said. "... Yesterday, felt kind of like just a funeral going in there. It's a very sad environment right now."
Maly has been aggressively sharing the petition to save the center. She also has emailed Cheek and Fred Hockenberry, FCC's executive director of auxiliaries, procurement and special projects, who was listed as a point of contact in Cheek's letter.
Both of them responded to Maly on Monday.
Hockenberry said "this decision was not made lightly, and we acknowledge the dedication and excellence that have defined the center's operations."
Cheek told Maly that since the children's center is an auxiliary unit of FCC, it is supposed to be financially self-sustaining, but the revenues aren't enough to cover the expenses.
Maly said parents weren't aware that there was any financial strain to keep the children's center running.
"It doesn't seem like there was a very collaborative effort to work with the parents, work with the community on how they could turn things around," she said. "... It feels like we need to act urgently. It's only three months from now that they're going to close, if it doesn't close before then."
Losing a community
Kaitlyn May, the parent who started the petition to save the center, said Cheek's letter didn't give a sense of how long the decision to close the center was being considered.
May's daughter was first enrolled at the center in 2021 when she was an infant until early 2022, when the facility had to close to repair water damages.
May was working full-time, but after her daughter had to be unenrolled, she left her job to take care of her child. Her daughter was reenrolled in 2023 and goes to the center a few days a week.
May's husband works full-time, and May does substitute teaching on the days her daughter goes to the center.
She said she was "stunned" to learn about the center closing — she felt like she'd been "left in the dark, and then someone pulled the rug out from under us."
She said she emailed Cheek and Hockenberry on Friday, but had not received a response as of Tuesday.
If the center closes, May said, she will probably go back to caring for her daughter full-time — something she knows isn't possible for all parent patrons — but her family would feel the loss of the center's community.
"I still talk to her previous teachers there whenever I come in to get her and drop her off. These are people that care about my daughter and love her," May said. "It's hard to have that pulled apart."
Seeking answers and solutions
Melissa Conner, another parent patron of the children's center, wants to know if any solutions were considered to keep the center going.
Conner enrolled her eldest son at the center in 2017 when he was a year-and-a-half, and he stayed there until 2020, when the facility shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic.
She was one of the parents who pushed for the center to reopen after the pandemic, as well. It was a difficult time for both parents and child care workers to wrestle through, she said, and the staff and families banded together to advocate for the center.
"We're really a village," Conner said.
In 2022, she enrolled her second son at the children's center, and he's still being taken care of there.
Conner said FCC's children's center is "quite literally one of the best programs in Frederick."
Maryland EXCELS, the state's quality rating and improvement system for licensed child care and early education programs, has given the center a Quality 5 rating, the highest designation possible.
Conner also touted the center's green space, the staff's years of professional experience and their ability to work with vulnerable students, such as children who were in the foster care system and children with disabilities.
"Child care centers have been experiencing incredible shortages of workers, but particularly skilled and experienced workers at the level that this center has," she said. "... It is not like you can just go down the street and get another childcare center. It's not easy to replace."
Conner said she felt betrayed when the closure was announced. She said families and the staff were promised by FCC that the center would reopen after scheduled renovations that were slated to close the facility temporarily from May to August.
She also felt like she was grieving and was confused by the decision. She sent an email Tuesday to Hockenberry asking for more insight into the closure.
"As an advocate and on behalf of the staff, I would really like to know, are we sure that these budgetary concerns were truly things that the children's center couldn't find ways to mitigate, or were they resulting from policies that FCC had in place?" Conner said.
She said parents are sharing what they've been learning and their concerns, as well as trying to advocate for the center's staff.
"We're the same village we've always been," she said.
