I am an alum of the Fort Hill kindergarten class of 1970.

I started Fort Hill preschool at age three, and the whole program helped prepare me for the social expectations of girls and for first grade, and it helped me develop basic learning skills. My time there was happy, and I looked forward to every day at Fort Hill.

When I attended Fort Hill, all the programs were part-time, even kindergarten. The school mostly served stay-at-home mothers in those days. Now Fort Hill serves mothers who work full time.

When the Fort Hill staff and the parents were told of its closing, there had been no time to announce the news to Smith College alumni. Without full-day childcare programs, Smith alumni would not have been able to use their Smith College degrees to pursue their career goals and to better the world as the college hopes they will do. What will Smith alumni think of their college treating early education as not important enough to keep?

When Smith College makes job offers to new faculty with infants and toddlers, Fort Hill has been one of the most important draws to accept the position. Not just Northampton but the entire Hampshire County has very few open, full-time childcare slots for infants and toddlers. During COVID, many family childcare homes and larger childcare centers closed permanently, and the directors chose to retire or enter other fields. Hampshire County has not recovered from the high numbers of lost childcare slots.

It appears that Smith College wants out of the early childhood field and still plans, in the long run, to close Fort Hill. That is a pity.

We could be returning to a world where mothers are not able to work when they can’t find high-quality childcare or any childcare at all. More young people are deciding not to have kids at all because of the high cost of bringing them up, childcare being part and parcel of that.

I do not understand how Smith College can decide that continuing to host and support Fort Hill permanently is not a worthwhile investment of their funds. What is more important for a women’s college than to invest in a first-rate, full-time early education and childcare program?

If Smith College closes Fort Hill in the future, other local area colleges may decide to close their full-time childcare centers as well.

Sara Elkins lives in Northampton.