This is the first part of a three-part series. Click here to read the introduction.
Starting in summer 2020, several successive Red Balloon directors stepped down from the position due to pandemic- or other health-related reasons. One passed away later in 2020 due to a sudden stroke.
Since Spectator broke the news of the preschool’s impending eviction last September, Columbia spokespeople have repeatedly cited leadership turnover, inconsistent communications, and under-enrollment throughout the past several years as reasons for closing Red Balloon in statements to the press, including Spectator.
The University published its only public remarks on the closure in a Feb. 14 statement from Senior Vice Provost and Executive Vice President for University Life Dennis Mitchell on the Office of the Provost’s website. Mitchell wrote that the University made its decision to close the school “based on objective analysis of Red Balloon’s track record.”
Three Red Balloon parents said Mitchell’s assertion of “objective analysis of Red Balloon’s track record” feels frustratingly vague and inconsistent with their experiences of child care at Columbia. Rui Xiao, a current Red Balloon parent, said the statement directly contradicts her experience with another Columbia-affiliated child care center, Tompkins Hall.
Tompkins is the only Columbia-affiliated child care center owned and run by the University. The other eight are independent but operate with some form of partnership with the University.
When Xiao’s child was enrolled at Tompkins in the 2021-22 school year, the center unexpectedly cut its hours for more than a month at a time, shortening its extended end time at 5:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. due to teacher turnover, she said. This happened twice that year on short notice, which put Xiao and her husband, a faculty member at Columbia, in a difficult situation because they had to leave their workplaces early to pick up their child.
“One of us needs to stop working at 3,” Xiao said, describing her day-to-day life at the time. “Which kind of work in the world allows you to end at 3 for a full-time job?”
When Xiao and her husband requested a tuition refund from Tompkins for the cut hours, they did not receive it until more than half a year later, she said. According to Xiao, she wrote to them five times before Tompkins sent the money to her.
In July 2022, one month before Red Balloon first received notice about the termination of its lease, Tompkins received three critical violations during an inspection by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, mostly involving staff not having received the required training in health and safety practices. The Rita Gold Early Childhood Center, a research center at Teachers College, received one such violation in June 2022. In February 2023, the Medical Center Nursery School received four critical violations.
According to Xiao, parents face numerous difficulties posed by the structure of Tompkins’ child care program: shorter regular hours, more days off—Red Balloon has 43 days off in a year, whereas Tompkins has about 70—and a lack of food provided for the children.
“It’s just a lot of work and burden on the shoulders of the parents,” Xiao said.
In contrast to Tompkins, where two teachers left the staff in the year that her child was there, Xiao said the consistency of Red Balloon’s teaching staff is important since “emotionally, the kids are attached to the teacher.” One of her child’s teachers has worked there for 35 years and another for 10 years, she said.
“It’s crazy because, think about that, all of us know—including the parents—all of us know that this school is going to be shut off soon, but none of the teachers left,” Xiao said.
Red Balloon parent Alison McIlvride, BC ’10, VP&S ’20, said the teachers at Red Balloon “through this whole process have stayed relatively quiet about everything that’s been going on, but they every single day provide fantastic care as if nothing is happening.”
McIlvride’s daughter attended the West Harlem branch of a private child care chain before McIlvride decided to transfer her to Red Balloon. She said the teachers at the other center seemed “overworked,” which led to high turnover.
“It kind of felt like at that school, they were just going through the motions, and I think they kind of wanted parents to optimize everything for their convenience,” McIlvride said. “There was a lot of turnover in the classroom. And I think ultimately the emphasis was just doing everything you could as parents to get them to get through the day, which is a lot harder on us.”
In a satisfaction survey sent by the Red Balloon parent board to all Red Balloon parents, all respondents—21 parents of the approximately 25 children currently enrolled—said they “strongly agree” that Red Balloon’s hours from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday through Friday, and diverse student body are important to them, and that the school’s teachers and staff are “professional and caring.”
20 out of the 21 respondents rated their experience with Red Balloon as a five on a scale from one to five, with five being the best. The one other respondent rated it as a four.
In light of her experience with Tompkins, Xiao said she was especially confused by the University’s explanations for closing Red Balloon, based on a November meeting between the Red Balloon director, parent board, and University administrators Loftin Flowers, Shailagh Murray, Dennis Mitchell, and Amy Rabinowitz. Leaders of local governance board Community Board 9 were also present at this meeting.
“I think if you want to talk about the standard of how good a daycare is, you look at your kid,” Xiao said. “If they’re very happy, it’s a very good daycare. So we told them that, and they also told us they don’t see any issue of the management or the quality of the education. They told us ... in the Zoom meeting, they admitted that it’s not about the quality. So I don’t know why later they claim again this kind of leadership turnover [is a reason for closing Red Balloon].”
University spokespeople repeatedly declined to comment on what had been said in the meeting without a Zoom recording.
In an interview with Spectator, CB9 Chair Barry Weinberg, CC ’12, said this characterization was “roughly in line” with what had occurred in the meeting. Weinberg said University administrators said their concern was not with the quality of Red Balloon’s educational services, though he said that they did take issue with the inconsistency of leadership.
However, Weinberg said that after working with Red Balloon in the past, the University did not appear willing at that point to engage with the school and work with the parent board to resolve its concerns, despite public urging from CB9 and local elected officials to renew the lease.
The University has repeatedly previously cited leadership gaps as a key reason behind the decision to close Red Balloon.
But, in an email sent by Annapurna Potluri Schreiber, the head of the Red Balloon parent board, to Columbia College Student Council, Potluri Schreiber wrote that administrators in the November meeting expressed that the University had been “wanting to close RB since before the pandemic.”
Prior to the pandemic, the director position at Red Balloon was held by Norma Brockman, whose tenure had lasted more than 30 years.
The administrators also said the University’s concerns with the governance of Red Balloon spanned throughout the past 10 years, but they “refused to cite any specifics,” according to Potluri Schreiber.
When the administrators said they were concerned with helping Red Balloon parents find alternative child care for the following year, a member of the parent board said she would need child care from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. with a progressive curriculum and freshly prepared meals at a similar tuition price point, Potluri Schreiber wrote. She said the parent asked for the administrators’ suggestion for an alternative school.
“This was met with pin drop silence,” Potluri Schreiber wrote.
Potluri Schreiber wrote that the administrators did not share details regarding the help or compensation they would provide families to pay for child care at alternative centers with higher tuitions and shorter hours. According to her, the administrators said this information was “confidential.”
Potluri Schreiber also wrote that the parent board extended an invitation to Dennis Mitchell and other University administrators to visit Red Balloon.
No administrators accepted the invitation, she said.
“The frustration on the community board’s view here is that Red Balloon is clearly a remarkable institution that does a very good job serving parents with complex needs,” Weinberg said. “It’s our position that while there may have been either operational or governance lapses in the past that are worth discussing in a reasonable way, it doesn’t seem like there is an appetite to address those on Columbia’s side.”
Continue reading Part II, in which Spectator examines the context surrounding Red Balloon’s eviction, including a national child care crisis and a University history involving child care center eviction.