"We are writing to express concerns we have regarding the Kindercare Center located at 1700 Providence Road, Charlotte North Carolina, 28207.

It has come to our attention that professional cleaning services are not being utilized at this facility, and it is your corporate policy that requires the teachers at our center should perform all necessary housekeeping services as part of their daily duties.

We have addressed our concerns with the Director of our Center, who advised we should contact Kindercare Corporate to address these issues.

We appreciate the fact that teachers are required to maintain a certain level of cleanliness and sanitization in their rooms, and we understand that basic cleaning may reasonably be a portion of the teachers’ job requirements. However, as parents we have chosen to place our children in a learning environment where the main focus is on education. We have witnessed all too often that the gravity of these housekeeping duties put an unreasonable and unnecessary strain on our teachers. We have also noticed that in the afternoon during pick-up hours the focus seems to be more on cleaning and sanitization than learning activities.

Again, we do not fault the teachers or staff, as we understand the Center closes at 6:30, and in order to meet their housekeeping requirements by the time their shifts end, the washing and sanitization must begin in the afternoon hours. The housekeeping duties are a tremendous task, and too many of us have witnessed the toll this has taken on the quality of services the Center is able to provide throughout the entire day. Given that we are paying for our children to be provided with childcare and educational services by their teachers from 6:30 am until 6:30 pm, we hope you can appreciate our frustration.

The lack of housekeeping services, and the toll it takes on the children and teachers, has never been more apparent than the latest flu outbreak at our Center. Within a short time period, we had approximately 37 confirmed flu cases and attendance dropped to fifty percent. The amount of teacher resources that were diverted to daily sanitization and housekeeping services in order to help ensure the health of our children was astounding and concerning.

In light of these issues, we are asking that housekeeping services be provided to our Center on a regular basis, by a professional, licensed and insured cleaning company, in order to provide our teachers with the ability to focus on their primary job of teaching our children.

We are confident this is not an unusual or unnecessary request. In fact, we have confirmed with other childcare centers in our immediate area that they all provide regular housekeeping services and this tremendous responsibility of cleaning and sanitizing is not tasked to the teachers.

We assume you are aware of the importance of abiding by the industry standards for maintaining cleanliness and sanitization in a childcare environment. With the threat of communicable disease and our own flu epidemic within the Center, we cannot over-stress the role of cleanliness in maintaining the health of our children. Many of the undersigned concerned parents work in healthcare and legal fields, where they are aware of the importance of these issues.

We also wish to place you on formal notice of not only the health risks to our children that stem from the above issues, but also the legal and reputational risks to your corporation should our concerns go unaddressed.

We respectfully request acknowledgement of receipt of this demand, as well as a formal decision on this issue within the next 30 days. Thank you for your attention in this matter."