On Monday afternoon, Oct. 19, the Center for Early Childhood Education at Fort Hill was business–or rather, play–as usual. Outside, preschoolers and toddlers piled onto a tire-swing and danced to live guitar in the yard, while infants gathered for storytime and sensory play. Parents lingered at afternoon pickup, while student workers folded laundry and washed dishes.
By bedtime, a series of administrative emails set an expiration date on it all: the tire-swing piles, the live guitar, the sensory play and the schoolyard catch-ups.
The emails announced the center’s planned closure on June 4, 2027. Sent separately to Fort Hill staff and parents, and then to faculty, the announcement came without prior warning.
In place of Fort Hill, Smith College announced it will transition to an expanded childcare benefit model. Instead of continuing to provide an on-site tuition discount to Smith families at Fort Hill, the new model will provide a portable subsidy for families to use at outside, accredited childcare centers for children age zero to 12.
The Case for Reallocation
In an interview with The Sophian, Smith President Sarah Willie-LeBreton explained the decision followed a two-and-a-half-year campus listening tour and multiple employee engagement surveys. Issues of equitable benefits were repeatedly raised by staff members who felt Fort Hill was out of their financial or logistical reach, President Willie-LeBreton said.
According to Willie-LeBreton, Fort Hill serves a very small fraction of the college’s total workforce–approximately 45 families out of more than 300 faculty and staff–yet consumes the entirety of Smith’s dedicated childcare budget.
“What I didn’t realize was how few families [Fort Hill] served in relation to how many people had children who couldn’t use it,” Willie-LeBreton said. “Equity drove [the decision].”
While Smith does not publish operating budgets for Fort Hill, Vice President for Human Resources Anne-Marie Szmyt said the closure is “not financial.” Eligible faculty receive a 25% discount on tuition. Under the new model, Smith will replace the center with an “expanded childcare benefit [which] will offer…the ability to receive a direct childcare subsidy that can be used at any licensed childcare provider.”
The administration argues the shift will multiply financial aid to hundreds of employees across campus. Parents and faculty argued that exchanging physical existing care facilities for cash vouchers both undermines working mothers and ignores the systemic realities of the existing childcare desert.
“It never feels good to close an early childhood center, and it doesn’t look good to be a women’s college and close an early childhood center,” Willie-LeBreton added. “My own sense of feminist purpose is to think about meeting the needs, not just of the people who can afford to pay a lot…but for everybody who is an employee on campus who has children.”
Facing the Pioneer Valley’s Childcare Desert
Finding accredited childcare providers in the area is easier said than done.
Northampton is part of what is known as a childcare desert. Facility options are severely limited; existing centers often have years-long waitlists or slim availability, especially for infant care. In fact, Fort Hill is one of the only institutions in Northampton that takes infants.
Ben Baumer, Chair of the Department of Statistical and Data Sciences and Co-Director of the Journalism Concentration, echoed similar sentiments. “The email was framed as, ‘Now you have the freedom to choose,’” said Baumer. “Choose from what? You just took away the most convenient childcare option.”
Faced with this sudden news, many parents feel the looming pressure of the June closure date and are looking for alternative care for the next school year. Long waitlists only increase that pressure.
“Where are these children going to go?” asked Maya Rosen, assistant professor of neuroscience.
Labor Tensions and Bargaining Breakdowns
The announcement has heightened tensions between the administration and the Fort Hill Teachers Association, which unionized in late 2024 and began contract negotiations in April of 2025. Union members were not informed in advance, receiving the email announcement on Monday evening, the night before a long-scheduled bargaining session.
“We have been bargaining since April [2025] with regular, long bargaining sessions,” said Kaila Goldstein, a Fort Hill teacher and union negotiator. “We’ve been working so hard to preserve Fort Hill for the future, and after years of bargaining, we are blindsided by this news, tearing that away.”
Willie-LeBreton stated she was unaware of the scheduled Tuesday evening union meeting. She also explained that direct, in-person consultations with teachers and parents prior to the announcement were legally restricted because of ongoing union negotiations.
“Unions played absolutely no part whatsoever in this decision, and I regret that anybody thinks that,” said Willie LeBreton
Faculty and Fort Hill staff expressed frustration over the lack of advance consultation with internal governance bodies, including the Faculty Council and Staff Council.
“The most important part of my Smith experience”
“I’ve worked at a lot of schools,” said Sylvie Hoffmann ’28, who previously spent a semester at the center for an independent study. “No school is quite like Fort Hill.”
The announcement has left Hoffmann and students employed at Fort Hill stunned and mourning the pedagogical loss. For many, Fort Hill’s Reggio Emilia approach, an educational philosophy revolving around independent exploration, has been central to their own Smith education.
“All the kids always seem really happy to be there, and it’s made a big impact on me personally to be able to be around that joy and growth and learning,” said Naomi Steckel ’29.
“It’s like the most important part of my Smith experience, genuinely,” shared Rachel Harris ’27. “I just wish more people would be able to benefit from it rather than nobody being able to benefit from it.”
Despite their integral role in Fort Hill’s daily functioning, student workers did not receive any notification from administration about the closure.
“I haven’t been told yet, officially, that Fort Hill is closing,” Harris said. “Everything I’ve gotten has been forwarded or by word of mouth.”
“Is this the future we want our institution to pioneer?”
In response to the announcement, both students and faculty have taken several direct actions across campus. On Tuesday, Oct. 20, a group of professors took their young children to the AI Colloquium at the Campus Center. The faculty were told they were being disruptive, and Provost Daphne Lamothe escorted them out.
Two days later, on Thursday, Oct. 22, demonstrators gathered on Chapin Lawn for a campus rally. Speakers connected the abrupt closure announcement to a broader shift in institutional priorities.
The decision comes as Smith begins implementing its 2035 Strategic Plan; one part of which commits the college to “fostering community well-being” and “transformative inclusion.” Demonstrators noted the hypocrisy of closing a century-old lab school and laying off 29 majority-women employees, some of Smith’s lowest-paid employees, while expanding investments in technological initiatives.
Taking the microphone at the rally, a first-year student spoke to the crowd directly.
“Every year, you are paying tens of thousands of dollars to go to a school that claims to pioneer 150 years of change as a women’s college,” they said. “Is this the future we want our institution to pioneer? Do we want our college to support Google AI instead of our teachers?”
During the rally, various speakers and faculty dismantled the administration’s framing of the closure, accusing leadership of using equity and feminism rhetoric to justify dismantling existing care structures.
Speakers referenced celebrated alumnae like Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem–the latter of whom once praised early childhood education as among the most vital work in the world–arguing a historically women’s college should expand, not eliminate, the support systems which allow working mothers to thrive.
Rachel Connally, a Fort Hill teacher and Smith alum, said: “This is a field that is historically women’s work, and should be, therefore, valued by a historically women’s college.”
Beyond the immediate crisis for working parents, student workers and education majors feel a deep sense of grief over losing a place where they learned so much.
“It feels like Smith is cannibalizing itself,” Harris said. “It’s an educational institution that’s closing another educational institution, not because it’s failing, or it’s doing a bad job, or there’s misconduct–it’s actually the opposite.”
Meanwhile, the long-term future of the Fort Hill facility remains unmapped, with administration officials confirming there are no formal plans for the building after its doors close on June 4, 2027.
Whether reading books, washing dishes, playing music, or catching up while toddlers pile onto the tire swing, for those who spend their days at Fort Hill, the administrative decision reflects a troubling indifference towards the very stages of life the center was built to foster.
“When we think about children who are zero to five, we think so much about possibility, potential, and the future,” said Fort Hill teacher Ren Dominguez. “This decision speaks so much to the lack of care for that potential… it speaks to an utter lack of care and disinterest in their own futures.”
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