Safety
One of the main concerns that parents had when reaching out to the Hays Free Press is the student-teacher ratio. According to Texas Health and Human Services, the maximum number of children a caregiver should have for toddlers ranges from 11 to 18, depending on age.
Courtney Neukam, a parent of a former student at TLE Kyle, said this was not the case in her experience. She was informed by Child Protective Services that her daughter had been spoken to about whether she was ever left unsupervised. When Neukam questioned her daughter herself, her daughter confirmed that there were times she was left alone in the restroom because she was unable to open the door or that she sometimes couldn’t find a teacher to ask a question.
“My kid is luckily pretty self-sufficient,” said Neukam. “But it is a concern at the end of the day because what if something had happened? She’s pretty self-sufficient on her own, but with 30 other kids, what happens when somebody steals a toy and starts a fight? Who’s going to break that up? Or if somebody fell and actually, God forbid, got hurt. How long is that kid going to be hurt before somebody would have known?”
She also noted that there was a day when she went to pick up her daughter and the teacher didn’t know where she was.
“There were a solid 30-35 kids in that room and one teacher. For a solid 15 minutes, the teacher couldn’t find my kid,” said Neukam, distressed at the memory. “I had a teacher go, ‘I don’t know where she is.’”
After being sent to see if her child had “accidentally” gone outside with another teacher, she eventually discovered her daughter hiding in the original room she entered.
Safety was also a red flag for former Kyle employee Janet Hanshew. Prior to her background check results being sent to TLE Buda, she claimed that management had her scheduled to work. When she voiced this concern, they allegedly grew angry.
According to Stacy Maas, who had a child attend TLE Kyle, parents were not allowed past the foyer, but were let back into classrooms after she contacted Brenda Schlutz, TLE regional manager.
“I swear it looked like two full classrooms of kids, but there’d be one adult or one teacher in there. So, I know for a fact that they were not staffing correctly,” Maas said.
Chelsea Martinez, former TLE Buda parent, noted that “it was like a revolving door of teachers.”
According to the Texas Health and Human Services, the following is the number of employees who left each facility in recent years:
TLE Kyle
- 11 in 2020
- 22 in 2021
- 40 in 2023
TLE Buda
- 34 in 2020
- 33 in 2021
- 59 in 2022
Reliability
Many staff members and parents who discussed their experience also commented on the lack of communication. One former staff member at TLE Kyle revealed that staff was told that their “incident reports needed to match whatever story she told the parents and if they didn’t, [they] would get in trouble.” She continued, stating, “[The director, Desiree C.] is notorious for covering up incidents, [she has] even gone as far as making up stories and blaming children for abuse caused by employees.”
This experience is similar to that of Maas’. She explained that there were multiple times when her child would come home with bruises, but she never received a report. When she reached out to staff, she claimed that they stated the teacher had already left or that they simply did not know. She also discovered that her child was being sent to other classrooms randomly throughout the day without her knowledge.
“There was just no communication [at TLE Kyle], they just kept us very distant,” said Maas. “I will say when we put in our notice because we were tired of not knowing what was going on with our kid … [The director] confronted me about it and said that we could have come to her if we had any problem. I was like, ‘I have talked to you about things.’”
Neukam also noted that there were multiple times she attempted to reach out to the director without any response. She was told by CPS that she should have received letters months prior about situations that were ongoing. When she asked the front desk, she was told that they were working on sending them out: “How long does it take to send a letter out?”
Although this was a common concern among parents, staff also experienced a failure to communicate.
“The employees are underpaid and mistreated,” said Paris Mough, previously a TLE Buda staff member. “[One employee] cried to management because another teacher told her that she would take the children to the bathroom and pinch them on the butt, so it wouldn’t leave marks … Management gave her a raise not to report.”
Child Well-Being
The biggest signal that the school was not working out for her child was the change in behavior, said Neukam.
“It started great [and I] had no real beginning concerns. My daughter loved it, had friends, made connections [and] she was learning fast,” said Neukam. “As we kind of progressed, I noticed she would stop talking about what was going on at school or when I picked her up, she was ready to be out of there. Then, I started really noticing [that] when I would drop her off, it was a struggle to drop her off. She didn’t want to go; she just wanted to go home with me … It was a switch with my daughter.”
Martinez also commented that her daughter’s behavior seemed to worsen due to the ever-changing environment and lack of teachers. Despite loving the center for her older daughter, she said that it was not the same when her younger attended.
“My daughter started having multiple potty accidents a week, she was four at this point and never had accidents at home or prior to that,” said Martinez. “[My daughter] would tell me that the little kids would play in the bathroom and keep her from using it, so she would wet herself while waiting. On top of this, she started having behavioral issues. If I wasn’t getting a call about her accidents, I was getting calls about her behavior. I asked them how they expect children to behave when they’re in such an unstructured environment with a new teacher every week that they don’t know if they can trust or not.”
Maas also noticed her son’s behavior changing after she moved him to the TLE Buda location, so much so that she had to pick him up in the middle of the day. When she arrived, she tried to talk to the director about what happened with her son, to which the director responded that he kicked a teacher and she was sent to the hospital, according to Maas. She was confused because that was the same teacher who had just let her in the building (Note: Maas’ son attended TLE Buda in 2022 and the director in her experience is not the current director, who started in July 2023.)
“I looked at her and said, ‘You mean [the teacher] who just greeted me when I came to pick up my son?’ And she looked at me and you could just tell she got really mad … She just said, ‘Your son can no longer attend here,’” said Maas.
Hanshew stated that the Buda location also had significant issues with cleanliness, noting that highchairs had food crusted under the tray, between the cushion and side of the chair, cabinets had slobber stains and were not cleaned and that the baby beds inside the crib are never cleaned.
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Although there were some difficult experiences, other parents shared positive stories. Tara Watamaleo, a parent who’s child attends TLE Kyle, reached out to note that, yes, there was a staffing issue, which could have caused chaos and a potentially unsafe environment, but that there have been drastic changes over the past few months: “The corporate office has been very involved and present on a daily basis [and] there is a new owner who has been there from open to close daily. The classroom sizes are in safe ratio with the teachers and the environment feels completely different. When you walk through the doors you can just feel a difference. Our daughter is happy and safe.”
“This center is not what it once was over this past summer and has great potential under its new leadership/ownership to become the great place it once was,” she continued.
Neukam also commended the education at TLE Kyle, stating that, though she had some worryisome experiences, the education was never the problem.
Adrienne Lozano, a TLE Buda parent, is also “delighted with the wonderful environment at TLE Buda since 2015.” She praised the center for allowing flexibility with her job schedule, the education system and the family-like environment.
State Reports
Below are some of the reports listed under the Texas Health and Human Services.
TLE Kyle
• Feb. 23, 2022 Responsibilities of employees and caregivers: Based on the interview with the caregiver involved, it was determined that the caregiver had used poor judgment when placing loose tape around the child’s wrist
• July, 13, 2023 Prohibited punishments: Based on the evidence obtained it was found that a caregiver yells at the children
• Sept. 7, 2023
Child/caregiver ratio: There were 21 children in a classroom with one caregiver that had a specified age group of four years old. This specified age group is allowed 18 children to one caregiver
TLE Buda
• Nov. 6, 2020 Responsibilities of caregivers: Caregiver did not know how many children she was responsible for
• July 21, 2021 Prohibited punishments: A caregiver pinched a child on the arm
• Nov. 8, 2021 Responsibilities of caregivers: A child was briefly left unsupervised on the playground
• June 13, 2022 AP Report child injury requiring medical treatment by a healthcare professional or hospitalization: It was found during the investigation that the operation did not report an injury to a child that required medical attention to licensing within the required timeframe
The Hays Free Press reached out for comment from TLE Kyle and TLE Buda, both of which declined to comment, but Gregory Salsburg, spokesman for The Learning Experience, provided the following statement:
“Our commitment to the safety and care of our children and families is unwavering and our highest priority. We have and continue to fully cooperate with our partners at HHS and have supported them in completing their investigations. Our attention is focused on assisting the centers to ensure they are operating in accordance with our systems, policies, and standards as well as those of the state regulations.”
