It was once called the “Ritz-Carlton of day care.” Now this Colorado child care center is at risk of losing its license [PAYWALL - ARTICLE IN COMMENTS]

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“It’s all a facade”

Alex and Colleen Ellingboe initially thought they were sending their year-old daughter to a “magical place.” For $2,000 a month, children ranging from six weeks old to kindergarten age can learn alongside a big koi pond with tasteful bridges over the water. The day care center looks like a little, old-timey village — complete with a gym, hair salon and library.

“Unfortunately it’s all a facade,” Alex Ellingboe said.

In August, the couple received a call from Crème de la Crème’s director, saying their daughter’s teacher, Patricia Dilport, had yanked her hair multiple times as punishment for pulling the hair of another child in class. Their daughter fell to the ground and cried.

Crème de la Crème management suspended Dilport after the incident and notified the state licensing department. But the center didn’t tell the child’s parents for a week, the family alleges.

“I was outraged that they didn’t tell us right away,” Colleen Ellingboe said in an interview.

The Department of Human Services, in a case report reviewed by The Post, said Crème de la Crème’s “corporate lawyers advised not to tell parents and that they wait to see what (Department of Human Services) says.”

The caseworker told the day care center that “they should always inform parents when there is an incident involving their children.”

The Ellingboes learned, though, that Dilport’s troubling behavior previously had been reported to management — but not to authorities.

Fellow teachers told investigators that Dilport has been known to verbally abuse the children, calling them names like “fat bastard, fat piece of (expletive), stupid, dumb, bitches, idiot and fat (expletive).”

She also has previously made “statements of violence” directed at the children, other staff members told authorities. Dilport has said she “wanted to choke a child,” the police report states, “while making the hand gesture of choking.” In another instance, the day care worker said “How about I stab you?” after getting frustrated with a toddler.

The caseworker wrote that Dilport’s behavior appeared to be burnout-related, and there were multiple complaints about her.

“Those complaints should have been documented and action been taken to ensure Ms. Dilport’s behaviors did not continue,” the report’s author noted.

Tracey Murray, Crème de la Crème’s regional manager, told social services that they are “a bit gun-shy and do not want to report too often, but they don’t want to fail to report,” human services officials wrote.

The caseworker told Murray that “if they have a concern, report it.”

The day care center fired Dilport after the incident. She pleaded guilty to misdemeanor child abuse in February and received a deferred judgment with a year of probation, court records show. The former child care worker did not respond to messages seeking comment for this story, and her attorney declined to comment.

The Department of Human Services, in an October inspection report, found the day care violated several stipulations of its probationary license, including failing to notify the child’s parents of an incident, the use of corporal punishment and subjecting children to physical or emotional harm.

The Ellingboes sued Dilport and Crème de la Crème last month in Douglas County District Court, alleging the day care center took no action after being alerted to Dilport’s troubling behavior.

The couple, soon after learning of the incident, moved their daughter to a different day care. But the transition took a toll on their child, who began lashing out through biting and hitting. She still clings to her mother when dropped off every morning, Colleen Ellingboe said.

“It’s absolutely heartbreaking,” she said. “I couldn’t help but think, ‘Should I not be working? Am I a terrible parent for sending her to day care?’ It’s doubt and guilt — it’s so tough.”

Crème de la Crème did not respond to questions regarding the lawsuit.

This isn’t the first time a Crème de la Crème facility has come under the microscope.

A Texas couple sued the day care company in 2021 after teachers at a center outside Houston allegedly restrained their 1-year-old child for hours at a time (the parties settled before trial). Crème de la Crème had been cited 119 times over the prior five years for failing to meet minimum child care center standards, the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services found.

At another Crème de la Crème center in Las Vegas, a teacher pleaded guilty last year to attempted child abuse after she broke the leg of a 2-year-old and tried to blame the injury on another toddler.

Six years earlier, parents of a child outside Atlanta accused Crème de la Crème educators of locking children in a dark, windowless bathroom for long periods of time with the lights off (that case also was settled before going to trial).

In December, police again came to Crème de la Crème’s Lone Tree center to investigate child abuse allegations.

Detectives determined the accusations were unfounded as criminal offenses, police records show. But the suspected staff member told officers that she has been “sexually harassed and assaulted in front of her director and he has done nothing about it.”

Police alerted the state licensing department of the new complaint. The licensing official, Sam Nikui, informed the detective that Crème de la Crème was still on probation from the previous incidents — making it the third or fourth round of probation for the day care facility.

“There have been many requests to shut down the Crème day care due to issues within,” according to the detective’s summary of the conversation with Nikui.

Nikui expressed concern for the culture and environment at the child care center.

“Sam is going to be going back out to the Crème due to this complaint and will be requesting that the center is closed, but the decision to close will be up to the state licensing board,” the police report stated.

The state’s Licensing Compliance Review Team, an inter-agency multidisciplinary team that recommends disciplinary actions to the Department of Early Childhood, initially recommended the revocation of Crème de la Crème’s license, said Hope Shuler, a department spokesperson.

But after settlement negotiations with the facility, she said, the parties agreed on more probation.

“The department continues to monitor Crème de la Crème monthly to ensure compliance with the requirements detailed in the plan and the stipulations outlined in the probationary license,” Shuler said in an email.

After KinderCare Learning Companies acquired Crème de la Crème last year, the company retrained Lone Tree teachers and staff on a variety of topics, including state policies and best practices, Colleen Moran, the company spokesperson, said in an email. The training will continue through the end of the year.

In addition, licensing officials will conduct regular, unscheduled school visits to observe classrooms, she said.

There’s no definitive number of violations that lead to license revocations, leading some child advocates to wonder what the criteria is for problematic facilities.

“In light of that, it becomes a discretionary system that allows some entities to continue operating poorly for months if not years,” said Stephanie Villafuerte, Colorado’s child protection ombudsman. That means the state could keep a day care center such as Crème de la Crème on perpetual, endless probation. She called the Lone Tree center’s history “incredibly concerning.”

“At the end of the day, you’re dealing with extremely vulnerable children: infants and babies and toddlers,” Villafuerte said. “Unlike older children, they don’t have the ability to self-protect, the ability to cry out for help and disclose sexual or physical abuse. That’s the real danger here.”

The Ellingboes don’t want other parents to be in the same position. Both said they believe Crème de la Crème should lose its license.

“Culture trickles down from the top,” Alex Ellingboe said. “This day care is too focused on the bottom line, as opposed to the children, to adequately implement a culture change.”

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When Crème de la Crème opened its $5 million day care facility in Lone Tree in 1999, it promised to be the largest, priciest and most advanced child care center in Colorado.

The Greenwood Village-based company, which now boasts 47 locations across 14 states, “aspires to be the Harvard — or perhaps the Ritz Carlton — of day care,” the Rocky Mountain News reported in a 1998 article.

Its “Disneyland-like” amenities included a 32-foot-high atrium housing a Victorian cityscape of themed classrooms. The company’s centers sport mini water parks and kid-sized basketball and tennis courts.

But beneath the opulent veneer lies a day care facility at risk of being shut down by the state over years of consistent violations, including repeated child abuse and neglect allegations, according to a review by The Denver Post of hundreds of pages of licensing records and police reports.

At least two teachers at the company’s flagship Lone Tree day care center have been the subject of police investigations over allegations of injuring children. One employee this year pleaded guilty to child abuse charges after yanking a baby by the hair and threatening to choke and stab infants during moments of frustration.

Now Crème de la Crème faces a lawsuit over that employee’s conduct, with the child’s parents alleging negligence.

“It is a repeated pattern with this place that does not show signs of slowing down,” said Alex Ellingboe, who, along with his wife, filed the complaint.

The Colorado Department of Early Childhood, which regulates day care facilities in the state, last year fined Crème de la Crème $10,000 after finding staff at the Lone Tree center did not report child abuse allegations to authorities for more than 200 days. State licensing officials told police in December that every time they visit Crème de la Crème, they find 10 or more violations and “they are making no improvement.” A state licensing compliance review team in February recommended the department revoke the center’s license, but ultimately agreed to keep Crème de la Crème on probation.

“There are major concerns for the culture, staffing and environment at the Crème,” a licensing official said in a Lone Tree police report.

Crème de la Crème declined multiple interview requests through a corporate spokesperson and did not address a list of emailed questions from The Post. In a statement, the company said it is retraining its teachers on child care best practices, including staff duties as mandatory reporters.

“The actions taken by our former teachers are in no way reflective of the high-quality care and education we at KinderCare Learning Companies strive to provide to the children in our care every day at our programs nationwide,” said Colleen Moran, a spokesperson for KinderCare Learning Companies, which acquired Crème de la Crème last year.

Probation and a $10,000 fine

Crème de la Crème’s Lone Tree day care center has been on a probationary license with Colorado since 2021 due to frequent violations of state regulations. Facilities on probation agree to probationary stipulations, with the terms unique to each license.

The current stipulation, signed May 1, mandates the day care center and its employees ensure children are free from physical or emotional harm or humiliation and requires staff to undergo mandatory reporter training, among other conditions.

The state inspects facilities on probation every month for six months, and day care centers can reapply for permanent licenses. But if the child care facility has “consistent violations of the probationary stipulations, any founded child abuse investigations, founded complaints, or fails to complete any of the training/course work listed on the probationary license, the application may be denied,” the state’s Department of Early Childhood says on its website.

Crème de la Crème has applied for permanent licenses several times over the past five years. The state continually denies the company, records show, keeping the day care center on probation.

A state licensing worker, in the December police report, said the Department of Human Services has screened out more than 18 reports — cases that didn’t go beyond an initial intake call — and assigned 10 complaints since 2016 regarding the safety and care of children at the facility.

A review by The Post of years worth of inspection reports shows state regulators have routinely found violations at the Lone Tree facility, including findings of physical and verbal abuse by teachers against small children that prompted criminal investigations. In 2018, a teacher slammed a child onto a mat and pulled children by their arms into the hallway, according to one report obtained through an open records request. Video footage reviewed by state inspectors showed staff members forcing children to take naps by holding them down, placing their arms and legs over the children’s bodies.

“This does not demonstrate knowledgable decision-making or concern for children,” state regulators wrote.

In April 2021, Lone Tree police received a referral from the Department of Human Services about an incident that occurred six months prior. Parents told investigators that when they picked their child up from Crème de la Crème one day in August 2020, the kid was favoring one of their arms. A doctor’s visit revealed the injury to be nursemaid’s elbow, a slight dislocation in the elbow that can occur when a young child’s arm is yanked.

A witness told police that one of their fellow teachers that day grew frustrated with a child throwing a fit. This individual watched the teacher grab the child by the arm and lift them off the ground, according to the police report. When she let go, the child began to hold the arm in pain.

Staff said they had concerns about the rough manner in which this teacher interacted with children. The educator would wrap her legs around the children’s legs to forcefully hold them down on her lap. She would pat their backs “really hard to the point where you could hear her hand hitting the child’s back,” one teacher told police. Children acted differently in the presence of this teacher, other staffers said, including wetting themselves.

Teachers brought several incidents of aggressive behavior to the attention of management, the police report states. Nothing was done.

“The directors would say they cannot do anything because there is no proof this is occurring,” the police report quotes one staff member saying.

Management learned the educator in question might quit so they “didn’t want to do the paperwork to fire” them, one teacher told authorities.

Other staff members said that they were taught management would handle concerns about how children are being treated at the day care. The higher-ups, they told police, would then assess whether those issues needed to be addressed by law enforcement or human services. Parents would often be left in the dark.

One teacher “was told to keep her mouth shut and it wasn’t her place to notify the parents of these incidents,” police wrote in the report.

The teacher accused in the 2021 incident, whom The Post is not identifying because she was not charged with a crime, told investigators she received training as a mandatory reporter “but she just skimmed through it and didn’t take it seriously.” She acknowledged struggling to pass a class about getting upset in the classroom.

Authorities didn’t learn about the child’s elbow injury until April — six months after the incident.

The day care’s director at the time, Sarah Nelson, learned about the child’s injury from a parent but “failed to take further action,” Crème de la Crème management acknowledged to the state.

Lone Tree police submitted charging documents against the teacher in the 2021 case to the district attorney, records show, but prosecutors declined to take the case.

The Department of Human Services, in a July 2021 inspection report, found Crème de la Crème violated numerous state statutes, including failing to report a child’s injury to authorities and failing to notify the child’s parents. Regulators also found the day care violated laws surrounding corporal or harsh punishment and did not reassign the staff member after being made aware that they were harsh with children.

The state fined Crème de la Crème $10,000, the maximum allowable under Colorado law.

Crème de la Crème management, in a response letter, told the state that the center had “taken so many steps — steps of which it is very proud — and is confident that the department will agree that it has improved its technical compliance.”

Nelson — who “hid things, told half-truths and was not transparent with management,” Crème de la Crème officials said in their response to the state — quit. The employee who injured the child was fired. (Nelson did not respond to inquiries from The Post.)

The company changed internal procedures, policies and training and revised its child abuse reporting form. Crème de la Crème also hired an outside consultant specializing in compliance monitoring.

But despite these assurances, the problems continued....

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