The collaboration between Open Markets Institute and the NWLC to publish a report warning that private equity investments in child care risk compromising safety and service stability for profit was mentioned in the Colorado Sun.

Eva Pietri was at work when she got a notification from Pathways Learning Academy in Boulder. The infant care program where her 6-month-old son had been enrolled for a little more than a week would be shut down for two weeks.

“We were like, ‘Oh my gosh, what are we going to do?’” said Pietri, who had spent months looking for child care and was now scrambling to find help, booking babysitters from online ads and waiting to hear from the school about when it would reopen. “It’s so stressful.”

The message, sent through Pathways’ parent portal, said the infant room closure would last two weeks and then it was extended by a month. Administrators never responded to Pietri, who eventually enrolled her son at a new day care.

It wasn’t the last surprise for Pietri, who like many parents was trying to navigate expensive and increasingly rare slots for quality day care. She also learned that Pathways, which operates day care and a preschool out of Grace Commons Church, just a few miles from their home in East Boulder, is owned by Learning Care Group, one of the largest private equity-backed child care groups in the company.

That was September 2022. Since then, Pathways has had five complaints filed against it with the Colorado Department of Early Childhood. It has been placed on probation by the state twice since January 2023, according to Colorado Shines, the state’s quality rating and improvement system. Complaints include allegations of inadequate staff training, failure to background check employees and having too few workers for the number of children in their care.

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This was also referenced in Valley News.