Fine Print Friday: KinderCare Learning Centers Enrollment Agreement
KinderCare (run by the Knowledge Learning Corporation) is the largest child care provider in the United States, with more than 1,900 early childhood community education centers spread throughout 39 states and the District of Columbia. Since over 200,000 children are enrolled at KinderCare locations throughout the country, I thought it would make sense to look at the agreements made by the parents of those children, which are required for enrollment. Here are some points of interest scattered throughout the KinderCare Enrollment Agreement. (PDF)
1. Medical Policies. If your child becomes ill at a KinderCare center, the staff will let you know and you must pick up the child no later than one hour after being contacted. If the child is infected with a contagious disease, s/he will not be allowed back without a physician’s note indicating that s/he is no longer contagious. If there is a medical emergency and the parent/guardian cannot be reached, KinderCare is authorized to take emergency measures, and requested religious exemptions will only be granted if authorized by state child care licensing authorities.
2. Fees. Tuition and fees are set by each individual center, and are assessed weekly or monthly. KinderCare does not give any tuition breaks or refunds due to holiday closures, closures due to severe weather, or any other scheduled or unscheduled closures. Yikes. Additionally, tuition will not be pro-rated and all tuition is due in advance of service. This is in addition to an annual $100 registration fee that is non-refundable, and which is re-assessed every time a child re-enrolls after dropping out, even if it takes place within the same year. Two weeks’ notice must be given before terminating the service, and if it is not given, KinderCare will assess the full amount for two weeks’ tuition. Finally, if there is a credit (prepay) balance of less than $10 on your account, KinderCare will not send it back to you unless you request it in writing within 90 days after termination of services. Ick.
3. Pick Up. Late fees are assessed for each child left past closing time, and if a child is left at a center for more than 30 minutes, KinderCare’s staff can release the child into the care of child protective services. That said, KinderCare’s policy for ensuring only authorized pick up of children is very strong, and only allows unlisted individuals to pick up children if either (a) there has been prior written notice given by the parent, or (b) the parent calls in to authorize the unlisted individual and answers the security questions listed on the Enrollment Agreement.
4. Safety. No guarantees of safety are made. None. In fact, the safety of the children is not even addressed in the Enrollment Agreement aside from the medical information and emergency care sections. KinderCare’s website addresses safety extensively, but that is not contractually binding and there is no statement guaranteeing the reliability of any of the points laid out on that page. “We are serious about training for earthquakes, fires, and lockdown situations” is nice, but there is no measurable quality and no assurance of safety.
5. Education. The full name of the company is KinderCare Learning Center, although there is no assurance of education in the Enrollment Agreement, nor any reference to any other location where educational standards and expectations can be found. Many of the centers are accredited by various accreditation bodies, but there is no requirement that a KinderCare center be accredited. There is no doubt that children will learn while they are at KinderCare’s centers, and the website provides plenty of information about their education programming, but there is no listing of curricula or standards of education for the children provided in the Enrollment Agreement.
In all, KinderCare seems like a decent child care center, and I have no reason to doubt the quality of their care or programs. But this site is about contractual agreements and the ability to rely on the agreements you make. KinderCare’s Enrollment Agreement guarantees very little, other than that they will make sure they get paid–even on days off. Between the fees, the lack of safety guarantees, and not addressing learning standards, it’s not a great contract. The Enrollment Agreement doesn’t even limit their liability, which makes me think the agreement was not taken seriously when drafting it. As the largest child care provider in the country, I would expect a bit more.
This just means that consumers have to be that much more careful when choosing a day care provider, and parents need to understand that they cannot rely on what it says on the website–only what is written in the documents they sign.
That does it for another Fine Print Friday. If you have ideas for other consumer contracts you would like to see under the microscope, send them my way. Or perhaps you would like to see a competitor’s comparison to this post or a previous Fine Print Friday entry. Let me know and I will try to get to as many of your suggestions as I can.
About Graham Martin
Graham Martin is a solo practitioner focusing on Contract law (including drafting, review, and litigation). He operates Martin Legal Services, LLC in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area.
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