At a public hearing on Wednesday, parents and teachers in Baltimore County gathered to save the daycare center they all call home.
The Baltimore County school district proposed that Campfield Early Learning Center be shut down by August 2026 at a school board meeting earlier this month, citing four elementary school projects in the area that will increase classroom capacity once completed in the coming years.
But parents and teachers of the three-to-five-year-olds at Campfield say this would negatively impact the center’s 377 students — especially the 33% of them with disabilities.
Jessica Miller has two autistic sons — one who graduated from Campfield and transitioned into Millbrook Elementary school, and one who will start attending pre-K in the fall.
“The very first week my child went to Campfield, he got off the bus and couldn’t get into the classroom,” Miller said at the hearing. “He could barely get off the bus.”
Miller said one of the center’s staff members carried her son into the classroom every day for the first week. That’s the kind of hands-on, individualized approach her children need — and they won’t get it in other schools, she said.
Read more (and listen) at WYPR.
