Ashburn Children's Center

On May 22, 2013, the owner of Ashburn Childrens Center, Philip Adams, made his employees and students' parents aware of his intent to close the school on June 1, 2013, giving only 10 days for parents to look for new childcare and teachers for new work. The owner included no apology for the closure or the last minute notice, and treated the news of the closure as an afterthought in his email message. Philip Adams, said that he could not negotiate a favorable lease agreement with the building's landlord and preferred to close rather than raise tuition rates. I certainly would understand if he felt he preferred o close the center, but giving only 10 days notice is completely unprofessional and unethical in my opinion when so many working parents depend on the service that this center was providing. Now there is an excess of parents scrambling to secure spots for their children in the other centers in Ashburn. I doubt that there will be enough capacity at the other centers combined to fill the need that Philip Adams has created with this closure. Plus, now many parents will be forced to place their children in other childcare settings as a necessity, and not because they feel comfortable with who is taking care of their children. Also, many children will be moved from one child care setting to the next until parents are able to make permanent and satisfactory arrangements for the care of their children. Philip Adams also notified parents of his intent to reopen the school in another facility which he has not found yet, date TBD. I want to make this unprofessional situation created by this unreliable business owner available to other parents who may be looking for care for their children in years to come. If Philip Adams feels that it is an acceptable action to close this center with almost no advance notice this time, what's to stop him from doing the same thing the next time he has a dispute or conflict with his new landlord? Here is the email he sent to parents on May 22:



Dear Ashburn Children's Parents:

Can you help us?

After much back and forth about rising costs of food,buses, equipment and our desire not to charge parents higher tuitions to cover these cost (not to mention Staff Salary increases and health care this year) with our landlord of fifteen great years at ACC, they are not willing to change anything to support us..........so, we need your help in finding a new Ashburn center, in an already constructed building, zoning includes school as a use...where we would really like to be is in a church basement. We would be an asset to the church and the rent would be about 100k per year to the church.

Our Gainesville parents found us just such a situation for our new Gainesville Day School, maybe we will be lucky in Ashburn too!

Actually, a parent found us our new Purcellville Day School site as well....

So, please contact me directly if you can help us at the Gmail below or 703 346 3146 directly.

We expect some of our great staff will move to work at Purcellville as soon as it opens..

In any case, we must close our doors at this building next Friday.

There is only one National Chain I can reccomend: MiniSkool.......Great Ceo who really cares , Doug McKie a friend. In our area MiniSkool is called "Winwood"

Please help us if you can....

Thanking you in advance,

With Love and Respect

Philip Adams and the entire ACC Staff.