Three hundred families are frantically looking for new schools for their children as Guidepost Montessori announced that all of its facilities in Colorado will close next month.
With little time and money, parents now have to deal with the difficulty of finding care.
The heartbreaking email was sent Monday afternoon to Guidepost Montessori families in five Denver metro area schools.
“Despite our best efforts to sustain operations, and after a recent and thorough review of our operational costs, the difficult decision has been made to close Guidepost Montessori at Parker effective March 7th,” the email from the Parker facility said. We sincerely wish we could give greater warning, but we regret that we are unable to do so.”
The child of Nora Johnson goes to the Aurora school.
According to Johnson, whose daughter had begun to flourish in her Montessori setting, “it was totally out of the blue.”
“They are leaving us in a really bad situation. Despite our dual income, neither of us is able to quit their jobs due to the housing crisis.
The short notice has left families feeling unprepared and unsure about what to do next, even if their deposit has been refunded.
In a setting where waitlists for high-quality programs frequently lengthen to months or even years, the closure gives parents only a few weeks to make new plans.
“We were on three different waiting lists when I was pregnant with my daughter,” Nora stated. “I was laughed at by four different day cares for not calling when we conceived.”
The emotional toll of closure is as much of a burden for many parents as the practical one.
The instructors are incredibly kind and considerate. Cait, whose daughter has attended Guidepost Montessori since she was 4 months old, expressed her sadness that her kid would no longer be with the teachers she has grown to know and trust.
“Now we’re given four weeks to try to find that that same availability and also aligning with the values and the care that we want for our child.”
According to Guidepost, the closures do not represent a lack of effort or failure on the part of the staff or school administration. According to Guidepost, this would have been prevented if it had been possible.
Guidepost has closed schools in Oklahoma, Virginia, and Oregon throughout the past 12 months.
According to a statement from Guidepost Montessori:
“A lot of the measures we took to survive COVID-19 and the labor market crisis of the past four years caught up to us in a big way in 2024. Our organization struggled to raise the capital necessary to support our schools, the majority of which were still recovering, and suffering major losses. At many schools, we were running losses of $50,000+ per month that our creditors were no longer willing to subsidize, and we’ve had to figure out how to manage. In some cases, our landlords have been able to help us navigate these difficulties. They have generously provided rent relief, or renegotiated lease terms, in order to help an individual school to overcome its challenges and reach a point of financial sustainability. In other cases, that hasn’t been possible.”
A number of schools across the nation are listed on its website as “coming soon.” included a Greenwood Village location that, according to the business, never opened.
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According to Guidepost Montessori, it is totally dedicated to making these final weeks as encouraging and helpful as possible.
They are still appreciative of the teachers and school administrators who are spearheading this change locally.
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They will offer tools to assist parents in discussing this transition with their kids, transferring their data, and looking into alternative local schools.
“As a parent, I’m crushed for her, but I know kids are resilient,” Cait stated. “It’s made us question what we want in a school, and we’ll be much more cautious about choosing where we send her next.”
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