One hundred and fifty years ago, Smith College was founded, in part, in response to the structural inequities women faced. While the exclusion of women from prominent educational institutions and the inaccessibility of professional careers were not Sophia Smith’s fault nor solely her problem to solve, she used courage and creativity to face those structural barriers and founded an institution to make her world, and ours, a little better.
Today, we face a similar crossroads given Smith College’s recent announcement to close its early childhood education center, Fort Hill, in favor of providing childcare subsidies to employees. For decades, Fort Hill has provided high-quality early childhood education to Smith families and the broader community while supporting the professional development of its educators. Smith has framed the decision as an effort to expand childcare assistance to more employees while maintaining that operating Fort Hill alongside expanded benefits is financially unsustainable. The decision to close would displace 29 dedicated educators, eliminate much-needed childcare spaces in an already strained region, and devastate families like mine who have come to love and rely on Fort Hill.
It is true that early childhood education is and will continue to be squeezed by structural pressures including difficult economics, the devaluation of early childhood care as “women’s work,” and the persistent shortage of accessible care. As at its founding, these roadblocks are not Smith College’s fault, nor can the college alone fix them. That said, to stare down these difficulties and choose to close Fort Hill is in direct contradiction to Smith’s founding principles and would be a devastating legacy for Smith’s current administration to leave. If not Smith — a progressive, historically women’s college with a massive endowment — then who will offer a model for providing high-quality childcare that allows parents to further their careers, women to remain in the workforce, and childcare providers to earn a living wage? If not now — when our government is openly targeting women’s and workers’ rights — then when will it feel like the “right time” to use our creativity and courage to keep Fort Hill open, not because it’s easy, but because it is the right thing to do?
Each day when I pick up my child at Fort Hill, I have the pleasure of walking past the center’s two playgrounds that are full of the people who mean so much to me and my family. Among the infant and toddler teachers, with groups of tiny children balanced on laps or lovingly grabbing at outstretched hands, I see the woman who gave my son his first bottle when he began at Fort Hill at four months old. Another still remembers and tells me stories about my older daughter, who also started at Fort Hill as a baby years ago, demanding her secret stash of Cheerios at every snack. At the preschool playground, I am struck by a memory from last summer when my daughter and other rising kindergarteners worked with their younger peers to brainstorm how to improve the playground’s “mud kitchen.” These soon-to-be Fort Hill alums would not get to enjoy the improvements to this beloved area of the playground, but they tackled it anyway. Simply because it was good, and just, and right to dream of a better playground for the children who would come after them.
Smith’s administration has a choice: they can accept that the barriers to equitable childcare are insurmountable and close Fort Hill. Or, they can embrace the lessons of Sophia Smith and Fort Hill’s own students to build something better for those who come after us.
Paige Hill lives in Florence.