Smith College President Sarah Willie-LeBreton on Friday reversed plans to close the school’s early childhood center next year following an outcry that drew hundreds of demonstrators two days earlier.
Willie-LeBreton announced the center would stay in business until at least summer 2029 in an email to teachers and families at the Fort Hill Center for Early Childhood Education.
The day care center serves children up to age 5, including many whose parents work at Smith.
“This is due to the efforts of us all, thank you to everyone who helped us reach this moment,” said a statement on the ‘saveforthill’ Instagram. “We’ve won the fight to keep [the center] open for now.”
This decision comes after hundreds of protesters marched from Pulaski Park to Seelye Lawn on Oct. 28 to protest the announced closure of the school the week prior. President Willie-LeBreton sent an email on Oct. 19 to Fort Hill teachers and faculty about the planned closure next June.
“I recognize that this has been an incredibly difficult time, and I am grateful for the care you continue to show the children of Fort Hill,” said President Willie-LeBreton in her email to teachers and families.
“The college continues to engage in the union bargaining process in good faith, and the valuable role you play in caring for children will be the foundation of those discussions,” the email said. “I regret the stress you have been feeling and hope this news helps alleviate some of it.”
The college had revealed plans to close the school on Oct. 19, and prompted an immediate backlash. On Thursday, demonstrators gathered on Seelye Lawn to voice their opposition.
Toddlers giggled while they chased floating bubbles, drew lopsided hearts or spelled out their names in colorful sidewalk chalk. Older attendees wrote messages like “Save Fort Hill” and “Smithies Support Childcare” across the pavement.
The children weren’t standing quietly–they were fighting to save a school that many of them attend currently, and where other students learned how to share, put on jackets and ask for help.
Just an hour before the protest began, toddlers waved colorful ribbons and danced in Pulaski Park atop a blanket of fresh autumn leaves. But twenty minutes before the rally’s planned start at 4 p.m., more than 80 adults had already assembled in the park, surpassing the total enrollment of 79 children at Smith College’s Center for Early Childhood Education at Fort Hill, one of Northampton’s largest childcare centers and the largest provider of infant care.
By the time the procession reached campus, more than 350 demonstrators filled Seelye Lawn, making clear that the fight for Fort Hills’ doors to stay open extends far beyond the families currently enrolled.
Later that evening, after all the children had gone to bed, and campus staff had washed the pavement clean, adults returned to Seelye to cover the pavement in chalk again. Among the new messages was a reminder of the day’s events: “At 7:14 p.m., Oct. 28, Smith washed away children’s voices. SHAME.”
Organized by Friends of Fort Hill, Wednesday’s march brought together current and former families, unionized teachers, Smith faculty, staff and students to demand that the college suspend its decision to permanently close the century-old center on June 4, 2027.
“Why?”
Opening the rally in Pulaski Park, Fort Hill toddler teacher Ren Dominguez opened their speech with an interactive “quiz” for the crowd, drawing on the central question of early childhood: “Why?”
“Given the fact that it really seems like nobody involved in the making of this decision to close Fort Hill spends time around young children and their families, and given the fact that the toddlers can’t be up here with me, I’m going to be the one asking some ‘why’ questions today,” Dominguez told the crowd.
Dominguez criticized the late-night Oct. 19 email announcement, mentioning that teachers only discovered the email because union team members were already going to be meeting to plan for their scheduled bargaining session the next day.
“Why did we find out about this from an email? My coworkers and I spent a large part of last Monday evening calling each other crying to make sure we all knew,” Dominguez said.
“Why is the elimination of my livelihood being framed as an expansion of equity? I am so sick of hearing the word ‘equity,’” Dominguez said. “Why does equity for others mean I lose my job along with 28 of the most talented teachers I’ve had the good fortune to meet? Why should I care about this benefit if it’s pushing me out of the field I thought I was born to work in?”
Closing her speech before the rally marched toward campus, Dominguez urged the community to pressure the administration and not allow the decision to be a finality. “This doesn’t need to happen. Why should Fort Hill be the thing that tears our community apart? We can come up with something even more beautiful together, if we can keep Fort Hill open.”
Former Northampton Mayor Clare Higgins spoke next, touching on developmental science and community stability.
“The way children learn about the world comes from relationships,” Higgins said. “What we’re talking about is emotional and physical safety, not just for today’s children but for the next generation.”
After opening speeches concluded, the crowd walked up Main Street towards campus. Chants of “Protect our teachers, protect our children!” and “Save Fort Hill!” echoed off College Hall.
“This community is not letting this school go down”
On Seelye Lawn, Kaila Goldstein, an infant/toddler teacher at Fort Hill and a member of the Fort Hill Teachers Association (UAW Local 2322) set the tone. “This community is not letting this school go down.”
“Our Fort Hill children are way better at collaboration and problem solving than the college has shown itself to be through this decision,” Goldstein said.
She reflected on the positive impact of her classrooms. “I come to work, where I get to marvel at what is possible. I watch in awe every day as my group of 2-year-olds problem solve and handle conflict, often without teacher intervention,” said Goldstein. “These children, they are what give me hope.”
Rachel Connally, a Fort Hill teacher and Smith Alumna, spoke to the importance of the community formed within the classrooms.
“They remember who drinks out of a purple water bottle and whose is red. They seek each other out for help when their push carts get stuck, and for hugs when they fall down,” Connally said. “The college’s plan to close our program dismantles the community that these children have created together.”
Connally asked the administration to take lessons from the childcare center’s students. “I want to implore the college to take notes from the youngest among us. Slow down, appreciate what is in front of you and lean in to listening, learning and collaborating.”
The Voucher Paradox
One main focus of the rally was discussing the disparity between the existence of financial subsidies with the physical care availability that exists within Northampton and the nearby surrounding area.
Smith framed the transition of benefits as an equitable expansion, one involving replacing on-site tuition discounts for 45 faculty with portable cash stipends for employees. The college had previously stated in their Frequently Asked Questions that this decision is in response “to consistent feedback across employee engagement surveys, focus groups, exit interviews, hiring conversations, and the Employee Experience Working Group.”
Marchers countered that vouchers do not create new capacity in a regional childcare desert. According to Commonwealth data from July 2025, over 48,000 children are living in childcare deserts in Western Massachusetts. In Northampton, infant care demand outpaces available spaces by three to ten times, a gap which was worsened by recent regional facility closures including Hampshire’s Early Learning Center.
Addressing the gathering alongside his almost three-year-old, Mehammed Mack, the Chair of the French Department and a current Fort Hill parent, challenged the Smith administration’s claims about regional capacity.
“We asked essential, data driven questions [like] ‘how many spots are there for infants and toddlers in the area?’ They were not able to tell us. And we actually know that. We have experiential data…all of us have called the childcare providers in town ourselves. The spots just aren’t there,” Mack said. “The VP of Human Resources [said] that providers were contacted about spots and warned about the closure. Having just visited all these schools, they were not warned. They were in the dark too.”
“The combined loss in this area – the Center School in Greenfield set to close the same month that Smith would like to close Fort Hill, the beloved Hampshire College Early Learning Center, and Fort Hill–means that about 200 spots for children under the age of five are not going to exist,” said Goldstein during her remarks. “That also leaves nearly 100 teachers looking for jobs that don’t exist.”
Union Campus, Union Power.
Teachers at Fort Hill voted unanimously to unionize with UAW Local 2322 in late 2024 and have been bargaining since April 2025. Union representatives received no notice in advance of the closure.
Sabrina deKastrozza, a supervising teacher who returned from parental leave one week before the announcement, highlighted some of the financial realities of Fort Hill staff members.
“Among us, there are folks who pay 60% of income from Fort Hill on housing,” deKastrozza said. “I lose childcare and my livelihood in one swoop.”
An Unwashable Message
As the sun set over Seelye Lawn on Wednesday evening, the crowd dispersed, and the youngest protesters were off to bed.
Before the closure decision reversal, Friends of Fort Hill urged rally attendees to sign online petitions at saveforthill.com that already had over 1400 stakeholders, according to a media release from Save Fort Hill on Oct. 29.
The college’s next bargaining session with the Fort Hill Teachers Association union is Nov. 9 at 5:30 p.m., and is open to the public.
In the end, the administration put into practice what Connally sees her youngest students do everyday: listening, learning and collaborating with their community.
Alessandra Simmons-Robles contributed to the writing of this article.
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