Fighting for Fort Hill: Hundreds take to streets to protest Smith College’s closure of childcare center

NORTHAMPTON — An estimated 250 people, ranging in age from toddlers to seniors, marched from Pulaski Park to Seelye Lawn Wednesday afternoon to protest Smith College’s decision to close its Center for Early Childhood Education at Fort Hill.

Fort Hill parents and staff members received a notice on Monday, Oct. 19, informing them that the daycare center would close on June 4, 2027. The college referred to its decision to close the center, which has 80 childcare slots and employs 28 teachers, and replace it with an “expanded benefit” as one focused on “equity.” Some who attended the rally questioned why the closure was timed with the center staff union’s active bargaining for a new contract.

“Why is this happening now? Why is the elimination of my livelihood being framed as an expansion of equity?” Fort Hill teacher Ren Dominguez asked the crowd at Pulaski Park. “I am so sick of hearing the word equity, I don’t want to hear any more about how this is such a great expansion of Smith’s benefits. I don’t want to hear that this is such a great move for the Smith community. I am losing my benefits. Full stop. I’m being pushed out of the Smith community. Full stop. This is a benefit I will never see.”

Among a sea of signs calling for the college to keep the Fort Hill center open —most displaying variations of “Save Fort Hill” and others reading “death to all union busters” — frustration with the college was rampant among not only Smith students, parents and alumnae, but also community members.

Former Northampton Mayor Clare Higgins, who once worked as a preschool teacher, spoke in Pulaski Park at the outset of the rally before the crowd made its way to the Smith campus. She spoke about the preschool closure’s potential impact on working families throughout the region.

“Smith has got the capacity to figure out how to do this. It might not look like what it is today, but it could be the next step in keeping that program alive, keeping that space alive, and keeping those really critical early education slots in the city of Northampton, which is in a childcare desert right now,” Higgins said. “We can’t afford to lose this much capacity in a region like ours, and we can’t afford for it to be transitioned into part-day, part-year kinds of programming because that doesn’t work for working families.”

Numerous attempts to reach Carolyn McDaniel, a spokesperson for Smith, by phone over the course of more than a week have been unsuccessful. Instead, McDaniel referred The Gazette to the college’s  frequently asked questions page on the closure.

In its FAQ page, the college claims the closure is unrelated to union efforts and was brought forth by community demand. The “expansion” aims to spread employee childcare benefits to all eligible employees. There are currently 45 employees taking advantage of the childcare benefit, according to Smith.

Under the college’s new childcare program, an estimated 350 eligible Smith employees can receive up to $2,250 per year per child for infants and toddlers aged 2 and younger, up to $1,250 per year per child for preschool children and up to $500 per year per child for elementary school-age children ages 5 through 12 at any licensed and accredited childcare provider.

The college’s faculty, however, finds Smith’s claims disingenuous, referring to the closure as a “warning shot” to see if Smith can terminate a unionized workforce and brand the move as a shift toward “equity.”

“It’s a warning shot to labor and our values as a community. Smith says the closure is about equity and not money and not the union. But if you look at the sequence in 2024, Fort Hill’s educators voted 21-0 to unionize. A year and a half at the bargaining table with no contract, and they learned that their 100-year-old center would close,” said Bozena Welborne, a Smith faculty member and Fort Hill parent. “Smith is positioning itself as the entrepreneur of this childcare model — close the center, privatize the risk, and rebrand it as a choice. If this goes unchallenged, it becomes a template, not just for us, but for other women’s colleges, and frankly, for the rest of the community.”

The protest came only hours after Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra released a letter to the community, in which she referred to the news as “heartbreaking” and said she was in communication both with the college and with Northampton Public Schools to fill the childcare gap left behind by the closure.