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KinderCare Learning Centers is an American operator of for-profit
child care Child care, otherwise known as day care, is the care and supervision of a child or multiple children at a time, whose ages range from two weeks of age to 18 years. Although most parents spend a significant amount of time caring for their child(r ...
and early childhood education facilities founded in 1969 and currently owned by KinderCare Education based in
Portland, Oregon Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland is the county seat of Multnomah County, the most populous co ...
. The company provides educational programs for children from six weeks to 12 years old. KinderCare is the third-largest privately held company headquartered in Oregon. In 39 states and the District of Columbia, some 200,000 children are enrolled in more than 1,600 early childhood education community centers, over 600 before-and-after school programs, and over 100 employer-sponsored centers.


Company History


Founding

Perry Mendel, a real estate developer, founded KinderCare Nursery Schools after speculating that increasing numbers of women entering the workforce would increase demand for preschool child care. The first facility was opened on July 14, 1969 on Sunshine Drive in
Montgomery, Alabama Montgomery is the capital city of the U.S. state of Alabama and the county seat of Montgomery County. Named for the Irish soldier Richard Montgomery, it stands beside the Alabama River, on the coastal Plain of the Gulf of Mexico. In the 202 ...
accommodating 70 children. A second facility was opened in 1970, and the company changed its name to Kinder-Care Learning Centers, Inc. By 1971, 19 centers were in operation and the first infant care was offered. The firm went public in 1972; by 1974, the company had 60 centers located in 17 states and over 500 employees nationwide. The company's first major acquisition came in 1977, when it purchased the 15 facilities of Playcare. In 1979, it acquired Mini-Skools, Living and Learning, and American Pre-Schools. In 1985, the company opened its 1,000th center. In 1987, Kinder-Care stated it was expanding at the rate of one new center every three days. It also acquired Sylvan Learning Centers, a provider of supplemental instruction and tutoring. In 1992, the company updated its bell tower logo and began to render the KinderCare name in
camel case Camel case (sometimes stylized as camelCase or CamelCase, also known as camel caps or more formally as medial capitals) is the practice of writing phrases without spaces or punctuation. The format indicates the separation of words with a single ...
.


Bankruptcy

In the 1980s, Kinder-Care, like several public companies of the time, attempted a
conglomeration A conglomerate () is a multi-industry company – i.e., a combination of multiple business entities operating in entirely different industries under one corporate group, usually involving a parent company and many subsidiaries. Conglomerates ...
business strategy to raise revenue, as its investors forced it to purchase completely unrelated companies such as American Savings for $188 million. They also purchased photo studios, shoe stores and a foreign fertilizer manufacturer. Chief Executive Grassgreen, informed by ' junk bond king'
Michael Milken Michael Robert Milken (born July 4, 1946) is an American financier. He is known for his role in the development of the market for high-yield bonds ("junk bonds"), and his conviction and sentence following a guilty plea on felony charges for vio ...
from the firm of
Drexel Burnham Lambert Drexel Burnham Lambert was an American multinational investment bank that was forced into bankruptcy in 1990 due to its involvement in illegal activities in the junk bond market, driven by senior executive Michael Milken. At its height, it was a ...
, led the company on an ill-conceived diversification plan in the late 1980s. As a result, the company's debt load increased from $10 million to about $620 million in 1988. The company found itself in deep financial trouble after Black Monday crash of 1987. During this period, Tull Gearreald, an investment banker, took command of the company as president and CEO. Caught in a cash squeeze in January 1991, Kinder-Care stopped paying interest on its debt. Still faltering under its high debt load, KinderCare filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on November 10, 1992. The company continued operating, although, according to a 1988 Forbes article, less than half of Kinder-Care's sales and profits for the year were expected to come from its child care centers. In January 1993, in a move that helped their balance sheet, KinderCare sold off Sylvan Learning Centers for $8 million.


Post-2000 financial history

KinderCare was acquired in 2005 by the Knowledge Learning Corporation (KLC) division of Knowledge Universe. By coincidence, KU was privately founded and owned by Michael Milken since 1996, five years after his prison release. The deal, valued at over US$1 billion, made KLC the nation’s largest private child care and education provider. In 2012, company revenues were $1.45 billion, down from $1.6 billion in 2010. In July 2015, Partners Group, a Swiss enterprise, bought Knowledge Universe. Knowledge Universe renamed itself as KinderCare Education in January 2016. The parent company, KinderCare Education, also operates Knowledge Beginnings, Children’s Creative Learning Centers (CCLC), and Champions.


COVID-19 response

During the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, KinderCare temporarily shut down 1100 of their approximately 1500 daycare centers, leaving the centers that have large proportions of first responders and healthcare workers.


IPO Filing

In October 2021, ''The Oregonian'' reported that Kindercare confidentially filed for an
IPO An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investment ...
. The company then postponed citing regulatory delays.


Accreditation

The
National Association for the Education of Young Children The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) is a large nonprofit association in the United States representing early childhood education teachers, para-educators, center directors, trainers, college educators, families o ...
(NAEYC) and other associations have accredited over 700 KLC centers.


Quality of care and education

Research in
Maryland Maryland ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It shares borders with Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware and the Atlantic Ocean to ...
found that children who had attended KinderCare were more likely to be ready for school.


Criticism and legal challenges

The company has been criticized as being part of the "
McDonaldization McDonaldization is a McWord developed by sociologist George Ritzer in his 1993 book ''The McDonaldization of Society''. For Ritzer, "McDonaldization" is when a society adopts the characteristics of a fast-food restaurant. The process of McDonald ...
of society".
George Ritzer George Ritzer (born October 14, 1940) is an American sociologist, professor, and author who has mainly studied globalization, metatheory, patterns of consumption, and modern/postmodern social theory. His concept of McDonaldization draws upon Max ...
critizes the company for "hir ngshort-term employees with little or no experience in child care". The company has been the subject of legal challenges. In ''Roberts v. KinderCare Learning Centers, Inc.'' the judgment was found for KinderCare. In ''Jesi Stuthard and ADA v. Kindercare Learning Centers, Inc.'' judgment was against KinderCare.


See also

*
List of companies based in Oregon This is a list of companies based in Oregon. Oregon is the ninth largest by area and the 27th most populous of the 50 United States. The gross domestic product (GDP) of Oregon in 2010 was $168.6 billion; it is the United States's 26th wealthies ...


References


External links


KinderCare Learning Centers – Official Site
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kindercare Learning Centers Child care companies Education companies established in 1969 Privately held companies based in Oregon Early childhood education Early childhood education in the United States 1969 establishments in Alabama