On May 14, parents of children who attend ONE Arts Community School in Burlington received an alarming email from the state. The childcare center’s license was being suspended after a weekslong investigation. Significant improvements would be required before it could reopen.
That same night, the Department for Children and Families posted a report in its Bright Futures database that painted a more precise — and disturbing — picture of what had transpired. On two separate occasions, children were left unattended for an extended period. Two additional violations involved children getting hurt: A 17-month-old fractured their leg after falling from a play structure, and a preschooler sustained an unexplained head laceration that required stitches.
More broadly, the report described a chaotic environment, with children hitting, kicking, pulling hair and throwing toys at each other, climbing onto windowsills, and, in one instance, pulling a handle off a classroom door and throwing it across the room.
From the outside, the situation was confounding. ONE Arts, which opened its first two childcare centers in 2021, had undertaken an ambitious expansion and now operates four centers licensed to serve a total of around 250 children. In the fall, the Burlington program moved to a larger space, the former Sara Holbrook Community Center on North Avenue. That enabled ONE Arts to open a new classroom in April to accommodate families from another Burlington center that closed abruptly after investigations determined that a longtime employee had physically abused children there.
But the latest expansion pushed things to a breaking point, according to several people who worked at the Burlington ONE Arts center. For close to four years, they said, staff had been asking the organization’s founders and copresidents, Becca McHale and Margaret Coleman — whose backgrounds are in the arts, not early childhood education — for changes to improve working conditions and create a safer environment for children. Instead, when McHale and Coleman enrolled two dozen new students, conditions deteriorated because of the strain and unrealistic expectations put on teachers, they said. That led to the state investigation; the resignation of the center’s director and assistant director; and, ultimately, the center’s suspension. At least three teachers have since resigned, and it’s unclear whether the program will reopen.
The situation marks the latest blow to Burlington’s already fragile childcare ecosystem which has, in recent months, lost at least 60 spots between the closure of Frog & Toad Child Care and Learning Center and preschool classrooms at the Greater Burlington YMCA and Burlington Children’s Space. If ONE Arts cannot continue to provide its 70-some slots, many parents in the Queen City will struggle to find alternatives.
In a statement to Seven Days, McHale and Coleman said they are “cooperating fully” with the state and are “focused on completing the required corrective actions, supporting staff, strengthening classroom systems, and ensuring that children return to a safe, stable, and well-supported environment.”
A message to parents last week states that they have hired a new director and are hoping to open “in some capacity” soon should licensors allow it. But families have not been given a definitive reopening date.
McHale and Coleman started ONE Arts in 2014 as an afterschool program and community arts space in Burlington’s Old North End. It became a nonprofit in early 2021 and soon after opened two childcare programs in Colchester and Burlington. Last May, ONE Arts signed a five-year contract with University of Vermont Health to provide childcare to its staff, then added a South Burlington center in June 2025 and a program in Berlin in January.
The expansion was made possible by hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants — from the City of Burlington, the state and an assortment of private foundations. The nonprofit’s public tax filings show that its revenue jumped from around $371,000 in 2021 to $1.64 million in 2025.
Interviews with five former and current staff members, three parents, and a review of multiple letters and emails paint a picture of a program that struggled despite those outward signs of success.
In August 2022 — after the Burlington center’s then-director Juju Montera quit because of what Montera described as “stress from running the school with little to no support” from McHale and Coleman — six teachers wrote a lengthy letter to the copresidents to share their concerns about the operation.
“Decisions that are made internally seem to prioritize having as many kids as possible, with as few staff as possible, with no concern for what the classroom environment is for the kids, what curriculum we have the capacity and support to implement and what the stress level is for all of us,” they wrote.
They asked for numerous changes, including the creation of staff contracts that clearly stated employees’ hours, pay and benefits; more training in safety procedures; compliance with the staff-to-child ratios required by the state; and locks on doors to prevent children from getting into unsafe spaces.
One of the letter writers, Emma Redden, said she was fired soon after — which she believes was due to her role in demanding change — and offered $1,120 in severance. She said she declined the money when she realized it came with a provision that would have prohibited her from speaking about her work at the center.
Still unsatisfied with conditions, ONE Arts staff began exploring the idea of forming a union — an unusual undertaking for childcare workers in Vermont. They eventually voted 23-3 in favor of unionization last year, and ONE Arts released a statement hailing the decision as a “historic step forward for our state.” But behind the scenes, staff said, leaders were less supportive and tried to sow doubt among employees.
For the past nine months, the sides have met regularly to attempt to hash out a contract. The suspension of the Burlington program will likely stall negotiations.
The program’s most recent director, Dayle Sargeant — who was not a union member because of her leadership position — said things began breaking down in January, several months after the move to the Sara Holbrook center. The program took in more children in the larger space, and staff experienced significant fatigue and burnout, Sargeant said. Several staff members left and weren’t replaced. That meant Sargeant and the program’s assistant director had to pitch in regularly in classrooms, preventing them from fulfilling their other duties.
While two new administrators were brought on, Sargeant said she repeatedly asked McHale and Coleman to hire more staff who could work directly with children.
In late March, McHale and Coleman decided to open a new preschool classroom to absorb the Frog & Toad families. Sargeant, who was out of the country at the time and not consulted on the decision, said she would have recommended against it given the already-unstable environment.
Teachers in Burlington were also against the expansion. Several days before the new classroom opened, they sent a letter to McHale and Coleman. The program had “fallen out of compliance with Vermont licensing rules,” they wrote, warning that “opening an entirely new classroom will further strain our staffing, and will inevitably push us further out of compliance with Vermont law, potentially endangering children.” Also complicating matters, some children from Frog & Toad were victims or witnesses of abuse who needed extra support, according to Eli Auchincloss, a teacher who resigned.
Still, McHale and Coleman went ahead with the plan. Though several new staff were hired, Sargeant said, trying to onboard them while also acclimating 24 new children led to further disorder. There weren’t always enough teachers to cover every class, Sargeant said, so she was constantly shifting children from one group to another to maintain the appropriate staff-to-student ratios.
It was “not an environment that creates safety, consistency and harmony,” Sargeant said.
I came to the conclusion that I couldn’t keep myself or children safe and was being complicit in the harm of children.
Dayle Sargeant
Parents noticed the breakdown, too. They received updates and photos from teachers much less frequently, according to one longtime preschool parent, who asked for anonymity to protect the identity of her child. Injury reports were not being filled out as they had been, and children seemed more out of sorts, she said.
In late April, Sargeant reported to state regulators three incidents of children getting injured or being left unattended. She resigned on May 1 but stayed on the job until May 6. The assistant director also resigned.
“I came to the conclusion that I couldn’t keep myself or children safe and was being complicit in the harm of children,” Sargeant said.
When the DCF report was released about a week later, Sargeant read it and “cried pretty heavily,” she said. She wishes that ONE Arts’ management had taken staff concerns more seriously.
McHale and Coleman declined to answer Seven Days’ questions related to personnel matters but said in a statement supplied by a public relations firm that they take responsibility for their shortcomings, have “real respect” for early childhood educators’ “difficult and essential work,” and “are committed to learning from this and to earning back the trust of our families and staff.”
That could prove to be a heavy lift.
One parent of a preschooler, who asked for anonymity to protect the identity of her child, said reading the state’s report drove home the severity of the situation. Though staff reported some incidents to the state, she said, most parents only learned about the specifics when they read the report. She said she was disappointed in McHale and Coleman’s lack of communication about the serious incidents the report describes and was not sure whether she would send her child back if the center reopened.
The uncertainty hasn’t deterred ONE Arts’ copresidents, who said in their statement that they believe they are doing their part to “help meet an urgent shortage of child care in Vermont.” In an email to Seven Days last week, McHale said the organization intends to open another childcare program in Burlington this fall. ➆
The original print version of this article was headlined “Growing Pains | Former staff say a Burlington childcare center’s ambitious expansion helped lead to its collapse”
This article appears in May 27 • 2026.