Employee Resources

This decision responds directly to consistent feedback across employee engagement surveys, focus groups, exit interviews, hiring conversations, and the Employee Experience Working Group. While CECE at Fort Hill served a small number of families, many faculty and staff have expressed that the benefit felt inequitable, with high tuition rates and limited physical capacity leaving most employees without access. By shifting resources away from operating a physical facility, the College can establish an expanded, flexible benefit that provides financial support to a much broader range of employees and their evolving family needs.

The expanded childcare benefit will offer all benefit-eligible faculty and staff with children ages 0 to 12 the ability to receive a direct childcare subsidy that can be used at any licensed childcare provider. Contribution amounts will be tiered based on the age of the child. It is estimated that approximately 350 employees will be eligible, which is significantly more than the roughly 45 employees who use the existing benefit.

Many Smith employees have regularly voiced that they are unable to take advantage of the childcare opportunities available at CECE at Fort Hill due to family finances and limited operating hours, among other challenges. By creating a more flexible childcare benefit, we can ensure our financial support reaches far more employees and adapts as their family needs grow and change.

Running a physical childcare center while also distributing subsidies would be financially unsustainable for the College.

While we understand and respect the desire of community members to advocate for a program they care deeply about, the College is fully committed to moving forward with establishing an expanded, flexible benefit that provides equitable financial support to a significantly broader range of Smith employees.

Because finding alternative childcare takes time and planning, the closure timeline is set to align with the start of the 2027–28 academic year. This schedule allows the College to launch the expanded, flexible childcare benefits as quickly as possible, ensuring that financial support becomes available to a much broader group of Smith employees without delay.

As of October 2026, 45 employees have children enrolled at CECE at Fort Hill. 

Although the College has never guaranteed childcare to employees, we appreciate that CECE at Fort Hill has been enormously important to the families who have participated in it. The College’s Human Resources team will meet with any family whose children are currently enrolled at CECE at Fort Hill and who would like individual help navigating the process of finding alternative childcare options. We will provide Smith faculty and staff with more information about childcare options at the Employee Experience Fair on Nov. 18, 2026, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the Julia McWilliams Child ’34 Campus Center. We are actively reaching out to local childcare resources and providers to make the fair as robust as possible.

Fort Hill currently employs 29 staff members. For Fort Hill employees that are currently union members, all specific details regarding severance packages, job transition support, and alternative placement opportunities will be decided together with the union through formal collective bargaining. The College is deeply committed to engaging in the bargaining process in good faith to negotiate fair, compassionate, and meaningful transition support for every affected employee.

It did not. This decision was grounded in long-standing benefit equity concerns and collegewide employee feedback.

The decision to close CECE at Fort Hill is unrelated to future plans for the property. The center occupies just a small portion of the broader 30-acre Fort Hill site, which the College has long identified as an opportunity for developing housing for employees and the greater Northampton community. Development of that parcel is possible with or without the center, and the property’s future use had no bearing on the decision to transition Smith’s childcare benefits.

Using institutional donor funds to heavily subsidize a service used by a small segment of employees creates complex issues of inequity across our broader faculty and staff. Instead, we are committing College resources to a new, flexible benefit that provides financial childcare support to all eligible faculty and staff.

A number of options were explored, including partnerships with other providers and altering CECE at Fort Hill’s existing model. These alternatives did not provide a viable path forward or the ability to equitably support a much larger portion of the Smith community.

This decision responds directly to consistent feedback across employee engagement surveys, focus groups, exit interviews, hiring conversations, and the Employee Experience Working Group.

While Fort Hill’s program is valued by many families with infants and toddlers, its price point has made it inaccessible to the majority of our benefit-eligible faculty and staff. We hope to collaborate with other childcare centers and work with the Massachusetts government early childhood education commission to develop partnerships that we can share with prospective employees. By transitioning resources away from a single physical facility, the College can offer a childcare benefit to a much broader group of employees—covering daycare, after-school care, and/or summer programs for children up to age 12.