Two Northern Kentucky branches of KinderCare, a corporate 0-12 day care provider with locations throughout the country, are being sued in local courts for allegedly allowing injuries to occur at their centers.
The local suits are occurring in conjunction with a federal, class-action lawsuit against the company, alleging that it failed to live up to its responsibility to keep children safe. The lawsuits all raise questions about the business practices of the company and the business of child care generally in Northern Kentucky.
The local lawsuits
The first suit is currently working its way through courts in Kenton County.
“They waited until I got there,” said Jake Stokes, a local parent who leveled the suit against the KinderCare on Sleepy Hollow Road in Fort Wright. “I had to get there at the end of the day to figure out what actually went wrong. There was no proactive communication, and it just seemed a very shady thing.”
Stokes represented himself in court Monday morning before Judge Patricia Summe. Summe has a habit of playing white noise over the microphones in her court room during deliberations, so the conversations between the parties was not intelligible. KinderCare’s attorney declined to comment, but Stokes informed LINK nky that the court was requesting new paperwork from him within a month. LINK nky is still working to confirm this with the clerk’s office, and we will update this story once we have a more exact idea of what the court is asking.
On April 10, Stokes went to pick up his 5-year-old son at the center. One of the teachers at the center informed him that his son had gotten into a tussle with another kid. He found his son in an adjacent room. According to Stokes, his son was wearing sunglasses, which he thought was strange, given that his son was inside.
“Then I take his sunglasses off, and his right eye is visibly much smaller than the left,” Stokes said, “and I’m like, there has been an injury.”
Stokes asked the teacher what had happened, and “she was like, ‘oh, so, they were playing with mulch. They were throwing mulch at each other. And, you know, I think something got in his eye, but we put some water in it, and we checked it out, we cleaned it, we couldn’t find anything,'” Stokes said.
Stokes was perturbed that he’d not been informed sooner but decided to go ahead and take his son home. Once they were home, however, Stokes said his son’s pain got worse.
“He’s holding his head, he’s in pain the whole time, he’s crying,” Stokes said. “So we’re like, ‘all right, let’s go to the doctor.'”
Stokes took his son to the ER, where he was diagnosed with a corneal abrasion on his right eye, essentially a scratch on the eye’s outer protective layer. The doctor prescribed him some ointment to treat the injury. According to the American Academy of Ophthalmology, corneal abrasions usually heal in a day or two. Stokes included the doctor’s diagnosis documents and photos of his son’s injured eye as exhibits in the lawsuit.
The following day on April 11, Stokes emailed the center’s director, Sara Bishop, inquiring as to why he’d not received a written report the date of the incident.
Bishop replied that “children are supervised while on the playground. If we see any concerning behavior we do try our best to stop the behavior and talk to the children involved. You are correct that their [sic] should have been a written report given to you at pickup. I am sorry that that procedure was not followed and I will talk to the teacher as well. Of course we do not want anyone to get hurt and we appreciate your understanding. Let us know if there is a best time/day for you if you want to set up a call/meeting to discuss further as needed.”
The center eventually sent a written report on April 15, but not before Stokes sent an email demanding $35,000 in compensation for the injury and its fallout. In his email to the center, Stokes cites three Kentucky laws (one of which has actually been repealed), which mandate injuries be reported within 24 hours, mandate centers provide adequate supervision and affirm children’s rights to safe care.
At this point, a KinderCare liability and risk manager, Heidi Beach, takes over KinderCare’s email correspondence.
“Our investigation reveals no liability on the part of KinderCare Education or any of its employees,” Beach writes in an April 16 email. “Therefore, we must respectfully deny your claim for non-economic damages. However, within the parameters of our Student Accident Program, we are willing to consider reimbursement for reasonable and necessary out-of-pocket expenses related to the incident.”
Beach issued a counteroffer of $2,500 to Stokes on April 18. Beach indicates in subsequent emails that the center would be cooperating with a licensing investigation.
Inspection documents from the state corroborate that the center had failed to report the injury to the Division of Regulated Childcare within 24 hours, marking the center as being “not in compliance.” A subsequent plan of correction from the state indicates the center underwent a state licensing interview on April 22.
As it relates to the center’s plan to avoid noncompliance in the future, the plan of action states that the “center will self-report any injury requiring a medical visit within 24 hours to the Division of Regulated Child Care.
“This procedure has been communicated to all members of management and staff at the center. This procedure will be included in new hire onboarding to ensure compliance for new staff & admin. We will also review this procedure during our monthly staff meeting scheduled for 5/19/25. Reviewed the procedure with our District Leader to ensure compliance and understanding from a district level down about the state requirements.”
The state accepted the plan of action on April 22. There are no other records of inspections or plans of correction related to the Fort Wright center since that date.
The other lawsuit was filed in Boone County in January. There are fewer details about this suit beyond that a child had “suffered a fall – the circumstances of which are disputed,” according Boone County court documents, on the morning of Jan. 9, 2024, at the KinderCare on Oakbrook Drive in Florence.
LINK nky did not speak directly with the family who leveled the suit. Instead, they spoke through their lawyer, Crescent Springs-based attorney Colby Cowherd, who informed us that “the child ended up with a broken femur that day.”
“We’re not entirely sure what happened,” Cowherd said. “We were told that he fell off of an 18-inch climber, but there’s some question as to whether that mechanism would even possibly result in that injury, and that’s why we filed the lawsuit to essentially get to the bottom of what happened.”
The federal lawsuit
KinderCare opened its first facility in 1969 and currently has at least 2,400 operations in 41 states and the District of Columbia, according to federal court documents. These include about 1,500 early childhood education centers and about 900 after-school and before-school programs. The centers serve children from the age of six weeks to 12 years old.
The company has three main brands: KinderCare Learning Centers, Creme School and Champion. It is, in turn, managed by a private equity firm out of Switzerland called Partners Group.
The company charges tuition, but parents can utilize government programs and tax credits to help offset the cost. In 2024, about 35%, or $942.1 million, of the company’s $2.66 billion revenue came from government subsidies, according to court documents.
Partners Group bought KinderCare in 2015 and, since then, has tried to take the company public several times, first in 2021 and then most recently in 2024.
It filed the necessary paperwork to do so with the Securities and Exchange Commission in September and October of last year. Partners Group used the IPO “to sell over 27 million shares of KinderCare common stock to investors at $24 per share,” according to court documents, and generated about $648 million in gross offering proceedings. Following the IPO, Partners Group retained a 69% percent controlling interest in the company.
In order to take a company public, an owner must submit paperwork laying out the goals of the business on an official registration statement called an S-1. Complainants in the federal case argue the registration statement is untruthful, “going so far as to describe the child care offered by the Company as ‘the highest quality care possible’ and a ‘safe, nurturing and engaging environment,'” the complaint reads.
“In truth, prior to the IPO KinderCare provided substandard care, including numerous incidents of child endangerment,” the complaint continues.
The complaint cites an online report titled “Problems at KinderCare Learning Companies (KLC),” authored by Edwin Dorsey, a writer specializing in corporate misconduct. He published the report on his online newsletter “The Bear Cave. “Dorsey published two stories about KinderCare, the first (linked above) on April 3 and the second on June 5.
The article compiles news reports and instances from social media across the country regarding purported negligence and abuse at KinderCare facilities. One video, for instance, posted online in April of 2021 in Milford, Connecticut, shows a toddler walking around outside near a road unsupervised. When the woman taking the video inquired with the KinderCare, they didn’t seem to be aware that the child was missing.
Another more extreme case was covered by TMJ4 News out of Milwaukee – a mother picked up her 11-month-old son from a KinderCare after the staff reported he’d started to vomit. The mother took her kid to the hospital, where he tested positive for cocaine. Apparently, he had stumbled across some a staff member had brought in and ate it. The worker was later sentenced to four months in jail and a year on probation.
Stokes, who was not aware of the federal lawsuit when we first contacted him, also cites The Bear Cave’s report in his suit.
LINK nky has reached out to KinderCare’s corporate office for comment, but they had not responded by the time this article went up. However, KinderCare did release a statement following the publication of The Bear Cave’s report, a portion of which is transcribed in the court documents:
“We are aware of this report. These were isolated incidents and not reflective of KinderCare’s values and the high standards we set for ourselves. In the event that incidents do happen in our centers, we have a strict protocol to promptly notify families and licensing agencies. We also work quickly to resolve issues directly with families by taking accountability and addressing what went wrong. To that end, in each of these referenced incidents, we conducted an investigation and have taken all actions necessary to ensure the safety of the children in our care, including the termination of teachers who were at fault.”
KinderCare’s stock was worth $7.56 per share (compared to the $24 per share it went for in the IPO) on the New York Stock Exchange as of 4 p.m. on Aug. 25.
KinderCare in Northern Kentucky
There are 13 KinderCare locations in Boone, Kenton and Campbell counties. They consistently rank as among the lowest (except, interestingly, the Sleepy Hollow location Stokes is suing) in the state’s KY All Stars rating system, which is designed as a kind of quality-control shorthand for child care centers that get public funding, at one star out of five. The program is voluntary.
The state posts all inspection documents for the centers online, which anyone can access freely using their search tool, linked here. The documents are divided between applications for renewing licenses, inspection reports, and plans of correction, which are exactly what they sound like.
Citations across the centers range from unclean facilities to centers hiring untrained staff members to other problems. For instance, the Erlanger branch on Dixie Highway received a citation in December of last year during a license renewal that revealed six of the center’s employees, one of whom had worked there for nearly a year, had not been properly trained in CPR or first aid.
The location on Alexandria Pike was cited for non-compliance in February for leaving some electrical outlets uncovered, not keeping up with staff training requirements, failing to keep up-to-date immunization records and various equipment problems.
The branch on Freedom Park Drive in Edgewood has been repeatedly cited this year for either improper supervision of the kids or having improper teacher-to-child ratios in classrooms.
The Boone County lawsuit is still in a very early phase, and the future of Stokes’ lawsuit is unclear. Both have tried to get camera footage from the days in question, but the centers didn’t have recordings of the incidents. The centers have cameras, according to the plaintiffs, but they don’t record the classrooms, so there was no footage to retrieve.
Stokes said he hoped to “raise awareness in parents who are trusting their valuable little ones at the hands of these people and these facilities and trusting them in doing the right job. But there is, I would say, an operational inefficiency, a very broad operational inefficiency at that.”
LINK nky is a media partner of WCPO.com.
