SOUTH HADLEY — Supporters of a child care center on Mount Holyoke College’s campus want long-term assurances from college officials that the preschool will stay open beyond a recent one-year contract extension that ends in June 2022.
To make their case, about 150 community members participated in a protest Monday against Mount Holyoke’s decision to suspend child care services at Gorse Children’s Center. The “March to the Arch,” as organizers dubbed the event, began outside the Gorse front doors at 5 p.m.
“Especially in the wake of the pandemic, you cannot afford to lose another child care facility,” said Amy Lanham, the mother to a young child who attends Gorse. “There are too many parents already out of work, and mostly women.”
Parents picking up their children, community members and Mount Holyoke faculty who also use the facility congregated with homemade protest signs. The group marched up Morgan Street and turned at College Street, eventually staging a peaceful demonstration outside of the college’s main gates at the intersection of College Street and Gateway Road.
Community outrage surrounding Mount Holyoke’s decision to close Gorse has been growing since the announcement was made late at night Feb. 23. According to the announcement, “expenses to operate Gorse exceed tuition,” and the college pays Bright Horizons an average of $325,000 annually to manage the center.
Following the initial concern over the college’s decision, Mount Holyoke President Sonya Stephens announced in an email to the Mount Holyoke and extended communities that Gorse would stay open for one more year instead of closing July 1 as originally planned.
“We are grateful for that one-year interim,” Lanham said. “We’ll get to stay here for another year. But we’d like to see more than that. We’d like to see a commitment from the college to really work towards a solution to keep them both open, long-term or permanently.”
The Gorse Action Group, a coalition of families who use the center and oppose the closure, was quickly formed to organize against the college. One petition, written by Gorse parent Allie Lepper, garnered more than 1,500 signatures in support of keeping the child care center open and accessible.
“We’re hoping to get a firm commitment from President Stephens and the college leadership for a long-term investment in the center,” Lepper said. “We’re hoping to get some continuous inclusive care. And we’d like some representation in the committees that are making those decisions both now and in an ongoing way, so this doesn’t happen again.”
Lepper suggested that the Gorse Action Group could be implemented into the college’s planning committees moving forward, a role that she would potentially be willing to fill. Other parents who attended the march echoed her wariness about the future of the center.
Mount Holyoke spokesperson Christian Feuerstein said in a statement that the college is “working with College governance stakeholders to finalize a timeline for further study, deliberations and recommendations related to on-campus childcare programs. The process will include opportunities for community involvement.”
Michael Eason, a parent of a Gorse student, said this isn’t the first time Mount Holyoke has considered closing the center, which inspired him to join the protest.
“The fight has been happening every couple of decades. It looks like the school wants to close it and then a fight happens,” Eason explained. “I don’t want people to have to fight for a while.”
The march — which took place on International Women’s Day — also focused on the importance of accessible and inclusive child care for working mothers.
Jill Binocour, who attended Gorse in the 1980s and now has her son, Ezra, enrolled in the center, held a protest sign that read, “Working Moms Need Gorse.” She works at the Northampton VA Medical Center, where long hours and difficult decisions can feel overwhelming at times.
“My career is very important to me, and so to be able to have a safe place to drop off my kid is important,” she said. “Ezra gets to see his mom out there working and helping veterans, and I also get to invest in the teachers who can help with his development.”
The center, which opened in 1952 as the Gorse Lab School, is on the college’s campus and managed by Bright Horizons Family Solutions, a Watertown child care provider partnered with more than 1,100 organizations, according to its website.