Bailey Preschool Under State Investigation
Bailey Preschool & Childcare Center is under investigation by the Michigan Bureau of Professional Licensing.
The complaint alleges that a child under the center’s care was physically restrained by a now former employee. With that incident still under investigation by the state, the parents of the child declined ELi’s request for an interview but confirmed they filed the complaint.
However, over the course of our own investigation, former employees and parents of children under the center’s care interviewed by ELi cited many instances of lack of proper supervision, even failing to change diapers when needed or give prescribed medication.
ELi submitted Freedom of Information Act Requests to the Michigan Department of Lifelong Education, Advancement and Potential to gain access to all ongoing and past investigations of Bailey Preschool & Childcare Center. In those documents, we learned of nine complaints filed since May 2024 against the center.
The center is owned by Sheryl “Sheri” Howard. She admits there were issues under a recently fired director, but denies many of the claims made by former staffers and parents. Howard also said there are accusations she cannot address at this time due to the state investigation.
Howard downplayed the investigation.
“It’s nothing out of the ordinary to be honest,” she said. “[The state does] their pop-in visits all the time, you get kind of used to it.”
Howard attributed many of the issues the center has faced to staff shortages, which may be caused by low pay in the industry.
Staff shortages have caused problems.
Keara Graff is a mother of two former students of the preschool. She said she became concerned in May of this year when teacher turnover seemed to reach a new height.
“We had been uncomfortable for a while,” she said. “There had been quite a bit of turnover prior to that, but usually not outside the realm of what you expect given that childcare is a national crisis we don’t talk about.”
Graff said her toddler’s classroom had gone through their third or fourth lead room teacher in approximately six months. Additionally, an employee who worked in the center’s kitchen left. A teacher the family was not familiar with gave Graff’s toddler yogurt, which is on their allergy list. Her child’s allergies are serious enough that a previous reaction resulted in hospitalization.
Graff said that a meeting with Howad and former center Director Cassandra “Cassie” Cutsinger resulted in her having “an absolute sobbing meltdown in the office,” recounting all her concerns.
“I expressed my concerns about the training, the communications, the inconsistencies of teachers,” she said. “The classroom would have a different person in the afternoon who would not know anything and say they had just gotten there at 3:00 [p.m.].”
Graff felt her concerns were ignored.
Howard acknowledged the center has experienced challenges with staffing, but pointed out that staffing shortages in early childhood facilities is a national problem.
“In early childhood, staff does not last very long,” she said. “Here at Bailey, we use a lot of MSU students so our turnaround is a little bit higher because of our students coming and going from MSU, going home for summer.”
Erica Willard, executive director of the Michigan Association for the Education of Young Children, said the field faces a critical shortage of workers. She said early education employees see they can make more money at fast food restaurants and so they leave.
She said higher wages are needed to prevent turnover that’s as high as 25 to 30 percent annually.
Howard said pay is based on education and experience. She said pay starts at $13 an hour, is increased to $14 if an employee has a college degree or Childhood Development Associate [CDA] certification, and $16 hourly if they have a master’s degree.
Right now, no staff members have a four-year degree, and two have CDAs, Howard said.
ELi reached out to other childcare centers in East Lansing to determine if there is an average pay rate, but only Eastminster Child Development Center would share its starting pay of $18 an hour for new staff members.
Graff is not the only parent who believes issues they experienced were caused by staff shortages.
Rachelle Milan’s daughter began at the childcare center in November 2023 and stayed until Milan removed her in June of this year. She said she pulled her daughter from the facility after she was not given prescribed medication on consecutive days. The medication was prescribed after her child was hospitalized with an illness.
At the end of each day at the center, Milan said she was supposed to receive a note saying when her daughter received her medicine and what food she took it with.
“I asked for it on that first day and they didn’t have it, couldn’t find it,” she said. “So I was unsure if she had actually taken the medication and it was liquid so it was kind of hard to figure out if there were missing doses or not.”
The same issue emerged the second day. After employees initially could not find the sheet with information about the medication, a teacher told Milan she could not leave the classroom to go to the kitchen to get the medicine because she was watching too many children, Milan said.
“I was livid and did not see that as an excuse to not give a child their prescribed medication for now four doses,” she said.
Eventually, Milan pulled her daughter from the center in June. She said her mother actually quit her job to stay home and take care of the child full time because she could not find any other childcare options.
Howard said that it is the center’s policy that children should not be left unsupervised, but that teachers should always be able to step out to retrieve medicine or use the restroom.
The center has adult-to-student ratios in place that are age-specific for each classroom, with one adult being required for every four toddlers in a room, Howard said. The director of the center is in charge of ensuring classrooms keep the proper ratio.
At least two of the complaints reported to the Michigan Department of Lifelong Education, Advancement and Potential allege that ratios were ignored by staff and the director.
“The center is running on bare bones and [is] often out of ratio,” read one complaint from mid-May.
A different parent leveled allegations about a severely out-of-ratio room their child was in, saying the lead teacher was left alone with 18-20 children for more than two and a half hours due to understaffing.
Directing the center is quite the task, Howard said. In addition to Bailey Preschool, Howard owns two other childcare facilities in Mason and Dansville. However, since Cutsinger was fired earlier this fall, Howard has been acting as director of Bailey Preschool.
“I have found that I can’t leave,” she said. “I am here from open to close; I’m running the building.”
She said she runs down the hallway every half hour to 45 minutes, checking on the classes. While the center’s outdated website lists eight different classrooms separated by age, Howard said only four are currently in operation, saying numbers are low right now.
Allegations include teachers mistreating students.
Daniel Gutierrez had a short stint as an assistant teacher at the center from May to June 2023.
He said he was put in a classroom before his background check was completed, was not asked about prior training in first aid or early childhood, nor was he given training before starting.
Gutierrez said other staff members were negligent and refused to engage with children, even when classrooms were properly staffed. He said he was one of three teachers who served as caregivers after 3 p.m., supervising around 10 children. He said he ended up supervising all the children because other employees spend most of their time on their phones.
He said when they did engage with children, they would sometimes lash out inappropriately.
“They would tell the children they wish they could put them in time out and hit them for their behavior,” he said. “This was a room with two year olds, children that are barely learning consequences for their actions.”
Milan also said she saw teachers mistreating students, going back to her child’s first day at the center.
“We came in and the teachers were quite literally screaming at the children to be quiet,” she said. “I remember picking up my daughter and right when we got in the car, [I started] just crying because it was her first day in daycare and just seeing how the teachers were talking to the other kids, it broke my heart.”
Howard denies the claims of mistreatment, saying she has not seen teachers acting improperly while serving as director. She said if she did see this kind of behavior, she would see if the teacher is equipped to handle their responsibilities.
“I would hurry up and get to the room if I’m hearing it,” she said, “[and] ask them if they need a break because in every childcare center, someone gets frustrated… If they need a break, let’s get them out and have their break so they can get out and regroup and talk to them about what’s going on and what happened. [I’d] also talk to them and say, ‘hey, if you’re getting to that point [of yelling] you need to talk to someone.’”
Gutierrez said he brought his concerns to the center’s director at the time, Brooke Crandall Melton. However, according to him, Melton’s “position as director was a title more than anything.”
“While I was there, Sheri did not give her any say over decisions,” he said. “And if she made a decision to fire someone or make significant changes to policy, Sheri would wait until Brooke was on vacation to undo the changes she had made.”
Melton declined ELi’s request for an interview, but did provide an initial comment about her departure in May 2024 in a written message that affirmed Gutierrez’s allegation.
“[Howard] really changed as a person and she was asking me to do just too much on all accounts,” she said. “[I] had trouble firing problematic staff because of her.”
Unsafe play spaces, dirty diapers, and a slew of other accusations against the center.
Gutierrez also alleged that due to a lack of safe outdoor spaces, his students were limited to a playpen that was in need of repair. Instead of hiring a contractor to fix the space, he said that Howard let a teacher make renovations that actually made it less safe.
“The cement the teacher put down was not even,” he said, “and in it she had laid plastic alphabet toys, marbles, toy wheels, cookie wood chips, which would stick out and come out. Children would trip and fall, or try to eat whatever it was they were able to get out.”
Additionally, two former staff members told ELi that the center only changed its policy to require diaper changes every two hours after a child was left in a dirty diaper for eight hours. The employees asked to remain anonymous because the center requires some employees to sign non-disclosure agreements [NDAs] when they are hired. Howard confirmed employees often sign NDAs.
One of the complaints to the Michigan Department of Lifelong Education, Advancement and Potential included dirty diapers: “My child comes home soaking wet almost everyday,” the complaint reads.
One of the former staff members said the school did not always notify parents every time children in the center had viruses, ringworm or lice.
Howard strongly denied this claim.
“Absolutely not,” she said. “We have confirmed cases, you have to let the parents know, you have to put signs up on the front door, on the classroom door, you have to 100% have them notified.”
Howard acknowledges that Bailey has seen better days with higher enrollment and a more stable staff. She encourages parents who might need childcare services to talk to her directly.
“Please come and talk to me,” she said. “Let me hear your concerns. Let’s talk, let’s have a conversation. Bailey is a good school. Are we going through a tough time? Yes, we are. But Bailey is already turning around.”