Note: This article is the first in a series. Find all parts linked below.
Despite reports of abuse surfacing, current and former Hilltop Child Development Center staff members and families say they have deeper concerns, and publicized incidents are a small part of a much larger story.
With a new director taking over, numerous staff members resigning — some say they believe a majority have left — and many families departing for greener grass, a former Hilltop parent summarized: “This was a systemic failure.”
Many parents said they never thought they’d leave their “beloved Hilltop,” the University of Kansas-affiliated nonprofit child care center. That was before drastic changes over the past couple of months. And some now-former staff members didn’t know last Monday that they’d be resigning on Friday.
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Current and former employees as well as parents all had concerns about speaking out, so we are using pseudonyms for most sources in this series. Information coming from those sources was corroborated with multiple people.
No member of Hilltop’s board of directors responded to a list of detailed questions about the issues discussed in this series. Cori Berg, who started as executive director of Hilltop on June 2, also did not respond to questions for this series.
Abuse reports at Hilltop
Area media headlines recently have highlighted some incidents of physical and verbal abuse that happened at Hilltop Main, on KU’s main campus, and at the almost-brand-new Hilltop West on West Campus.
The public reports have been available for at least a month, but some Hilltop parents said they were unaware of them until last week.
Staff members said they had heard some information through the grapevine, but hadn’t heard anything concrete until Berg, the new executive director, told them about all of it during a staff meeting last month. And some staff members felt that they were being blamed for the actions of people who were long gone at that point.
“Hilltop has a culture of secrecy with these things, and it stops now,” Berg told staff members during their July meeting.
“That is complete bullshit,” said Liz, a former teacher who worked at Hilltop for several years. “Nobody has ever kept any type of child abuse, anything like that, a secret.”
There was, however, a lack of leadership, and a lack of understanding of who was supposed to do what, former staff members said.
They said they believe a list of several issues investigated in February at Hilltop West were all connected to one person, who was ultimately fired.
The incidents are publicly detailed in a report from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment:
• “A staff member engaged in corporal punishment when the individual grabbed children by the arms and forcefully set them down in chairs and on the floor. The individual also pulled chairs out from under children, causing them to fall to the floor.”
• “A staff member used a cart that was used for storing napping cots to block two children in a closet, so that the children were not roaming around the room while the staff members were setting out the cots.”
• “A staff member engaged in verbal abuse with several children, yelling at them with an aggressive tone of voice. The individual said things like, ‘I don’t even feel sorry for you!’, and, ‘You are going to sit there while we all watch you cry!’”
• “A staff member gave a child caramel who was on a ketogenic diet for seizures.”
Liz and Charlotte, a former teacher at West, said the center’s interim director would not fire anyone. We could not reach the former interim director for comment.
“She was not going to let anybody be fired. She did not want to deal with that. It was not happening,” Charlotte said.
Instead, Charlotte said, administrative staff members, who also could not be reached for comment, “tried so hard” to do something and were often upset, feeling that their hands were tied. The abusive teacher’s co-teacher was also asking for help often.
“I believe that person finally just had enough, sent an email and said ‘I will be calling the state.’ And then that was finally enough,” Charlotte said.
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As mandatory reporters, any teacher who knows about abuse happening is required to report it to the state. The state’s investigation found that staff members did not report the suspected abuse within 24 hours as they are required to under the law.
Hilltop employees will have further training on that, according to a letter to school families from Casey Fraites-Chapes, president of Hilltop’s board, and Jennifer Wamelink, KU’s associate vice president of student affairs.
“Changes in policies, practices, and training are underway to ensure Hilltop is the community we all expect and need it to be,” the letter stated. “Indeed, Hilltop must be a place where concerns are taken seriously and where all of us report child abuse promptly, even when it is difficult for us personally.”
‘The van incident’
Staff members were quick to say all the incidents the state investigated were very serious and can’t happen again. But they also said those incidents have been portrayed as defining the entire center, and that’s not at all accurate.
At Hilltop Main, the state investigated some additional complaints between April and June, with these findings:
• “While on a field trip to the city library, 3 staff left a 5-year-old child unsupervised in a van for 50 minutes,” and “When leaving the vehicle the driver did not make certain that children were still inside leaving a 5-year-old alone in the van.”
• “Prohibited punishment was used when a teacher would humiliate children by spraying them with a squirt bottle to have them stop talking.”
• “A critical incident report was not filled out and submitted to the department by the next working day after the parent informed the facility that the child was taken to the doctor and was told that child had a mild concussion from hitting their head while on the playground.”
The “van incident,” as it became known, occurred on April 4, and the lead teacher resigned the same day. As horrifying as it was — and how disastrous it could’ve been, had it been warmer outside — the child was physically OK.
The center has ceased field trips in response to reevaluate protocols and ensure that doesn’t happen again. (Parents, though, have still had to pay $30-per-month activity fees over the summer for field trips the kids aren’t taking.)
Emily, the parent of a student who was in that class, said she thinks this could have happened to any of the teachers because of conditions at Hilltop.
“What we have seen, particularly this year, is that they’re overworked, they don’t seem to have support from leadership, and they don’t have consistency as far as what they’re told and what happens,” Emily said. For instance, teachers are told they’ll have an assistant but then they don’t, their classes are getting switched, and so forth.
Emma, a parent of a current Hilltop Main student, said that “The reason that I feel comfortable with it is because we have had such incredible experiences with staff, even throughout the turmoil that the center has been going through over the last year, I never had a concern about dropping my children off because their teachers were genuinely such wonderful and caring individuals.”
Emily and multiple other parents and staff members spoke highly of the teacher who resigned over the incident.
“I really care about that teacher. I think she’s great. I think it was a terrible mistake,” Emily said. “I think as humans, we’re all prone to mistakes. And I feel like there was a lack of institutional support and leadership that made that situation ripe for happening.”
With regard to the other reports, Emily said she thinks some teachers may have been bad actors, but that doesn’t happen in isolation.
“Our family truly believes this was a systemic failure, and to look to the teachers as the reason this is failing is very shortsighted,” she said.
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Keep reading:
Nathan Kramer / Lawrence Times‘A systemic failure,’ part 1: Hilltop Child Development Center staff, families say abuse reports are symptoms of bigger issues
Nathan Kramer / Lawrence Times
Nathan Kramer / Lawrence Times
Mackenzie Clark (she/her), reporter/founder of The Lawrence Times, can be reached at mclark@lawrencekstimes.com. Read more of her work for the Times here. Check out her staff bio here.
— Wulfe Wulfemeyer contributed to this coverage.
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Molly Adams / Lawrence Times
Nathan Kramer / Lawrence Times
More coverage of Hilltop Child Development Center:
Nathan Kramer / Lawrence Times
Nathan Kramer / Lawrence Times‘A systemic failure,’ part 1: Hilltop Child Development Center staff, families say abuse reports are symptoms of bigger issues
Nathan Kramer / Lawrence Times
