Families struggle to find child care after First Baptist Church Kyle closes Mother's Day Out Program

KYLE — Families are left frustrated and utterly heartbroken after First Baptist Church in Kyle announced the closure of its Mother’s Day Out Program (MDO) in early May.

The program provided child care for several families in the community — whether they are members of the church or not — and was a resource they heavily relied on. Now, families are scrambling to find alternative child care in the area, which is a challenge they were not expecting to deal with this summer.

“I’m just heartbroken,” said Analisa Goldblatt, a mother of two sons who attended MDO. “It's been awful [and] it's been stressful. It has been consuming my time [and] my mental energy. I want to cry just thinking about it. There have been a couple of places that have availability for maybe my older son, but not my younger one. The places that really would be the best fit for us don't have any availability right now and they won't most likely in the fall. I work part-time and I don't have any child care lined up.”

Another mother, Stephanie Mertz, moved with her family to the area in 2018. While she was in physical therapy with her newborn, her therapist and a neighbor recommended the MDO for child care. They were members of the program since the spring of 2019 and were “super shocked and really devastated” when they heard it was shutting down.

“We had another son 15 months after the first and put him in right away. We have found most of our Kyle community through their program, all my friends have been there. The teachers have just been amazing,” she said. “[We were] trying to figure out a couple of little special needs things [for] my oldest and his teachers have been on the frontlines trying to help us get the help we need and meeting with me. I wouldn't have been able to do any of that if I hadn't had them in there.”

Photo by Brittany Kelley
First Baptist Church in Kyle announced it was shutting down the Mother’s Day Out Program, which offered child care for several families in the community.[/caption]

“I was pretty frustrated that they didn't give us at least the summer to kind of transition out. There's nothing available for us in the fall. I feel like we're kind of a year behind again. I'm on a waitlist everywhere,” Mertz added. “My oldest is going into pre-K and it's just a very frustrating time because I would really like him to be in something a little more consistent right now.”

“From one week to the next, it closed down. My kids were already signed up to go back in the summer and fall,” said Karen Figueroa, echoing Goldblatt’s and Mertz’s comments. “It was very unexpected and my daughter asks me every day if she’s going back and telling her no breaks my heart ... She’s 3 and doesn’t understand what’s going on.”

The consensus among the parents has been that the church did not give them sufficient notice to find alternative child care. And when they find potential places, there is no availability, they have to be put on a lengthy waitlist or it doesn’t fit into their budget.

Goldblatt said that she paid $850 monthly for both of her sons in the four-day program at MDO, while she is looking at paying at least $2,000 monthly for equivalent hours at places that also have fall availability.

Goldblatt clarified that she does not hold any of the MDO staff members accountable.

“I just want to be really clear that with the closure, my problem is not with Miss Jenny and the MDO staff, but it's with the way in which the church handled it,” she said. “And I just also want to be really clear that I know shutting the program down was their prerogative; it's their right to do so. That's not the problem. It was the way in which it was handled that really hurt all of us even more.”

Parents are not the only ones who understand the struggles following the closure — teachers and staff do, too.

Michelle Spitsnaugle Meador, who was an MDO teacher and had three grandchildren who attended the program, said the closure is a disservice to the community. Along with the families, the staff were also given short notice.

“The staff and families were given two days notice of its closure. We were told last minute that they were not even going to allow the summer program to be held. This was not ample time for anyone to secure child care or an educational program for the children,” she said. “By that time, summer camps were full and child care and other preschool programs had waitlists going into the 2024-25 school year. There are not many options in the Kyle/Buda area. The area is growing too quickly to accommodate young families with child care and/or preschool needs. The saddest thing about this situation is the fact it was not necessary to close now or even for the next school year.”

She added that they haven’t even found child care options yet for her grandchildren for the upcoming school year.

“Daycares and smaller preschools ask for a $100-$200 deposit just to put your child on a waitlist. That adds up if you are placing your children on multiple waitlists, which you need to do to get in. It’s also extremely difficult to find a program that can accommodate multiple children of different ages,” Meador said. “Right now, our option is for one sibling to attend one school for five days and the other two days at a different school. This isn’t feasible when parents need to be at work. The closure of the school was handled so poorly and unprofessionally. No one took into account the hardships this was going to create.”

Anthony Sifuentes currently attends First Baptist Church in San Marcos, but used to attend First Baptist Church in Kyle for five years and was on the advisory board, which acted as a supportive role for the MDO. His daughter also attended MDO before she reached kindergarten.

Sifuentes said another component of the upset surrounding the closure is that a lot of the families chose to send their children to the MDO because it was a Christian-based program, which can be hard to find with availability in the area.

“That's why it was just so sad to hear that happen and the way it impacts the teachers, the community and the church. That program has been around [for about] 15-plus years, I don't know the exact time when it started, but I know it's been around for over a decade,” he explained. “The original plan for Mother's Day Out was to continue to allow it to grow and eventually find a bigger building. This was pre-COVID. We knew that program was growing and we were going to have to either build a new building or find an additional building because of all the growth that it was having.”

He said that, at least during the time he was on the advisory board, the program was bringing money into the church.

“It was putting, after they paid all the expenses, money back into the church. So to me, that's a negative thing for the church because they have to recoup that money now,” Sifuentes said. “I know this year’s budget for the Mother's Day Out program was like $430,000 and after they paid the budget, they should have had about $50,000-$60,000 left over to put back into the church."

Sifuentes also explained that in 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the pastor got sick and died. The church had an interim pastor for about 18 months and a new pastor was appointed in January 2023.

“The church has been through a lot of different things the last few years and not in a positive way. Now, you have a church body that is trying to support this new pastor’s decision, but I know there's a good amount of people that are also against it. But what do you do? All you can do is put your trust in God and hope that everything works out for the best,” he said.

The Hays Free Press requested for First Baptist Church in Kyle to provide comments or additional information behind the closure. Lead Pastor Kevin Cornelius provided the following statement:

“As a small church with limited resources for ministry, a business decision was made to close down our Mother’s Day Out Program so that we can focus on outreach and growth to meet the spiritual needs of our worship community here in Hays County. Although we are saddened at the impact this closing of MDO will have on the families that we were privileged to serve, we feel that this is a necessary reallocation of our resources to enable us to better accomplish the mission of the church as we grow and require more space for our other ministries.”