Parents and staff are demanding answers and money, after they say a Wilson daycare closed last week with nearly no notice.
Kid City USA shut its doors on Friday, after alerting parents and staff on Thursday. The closure has put roughly 20 staff out of a job and left roughly 75 families searching for childcare and a refund on tuition they’d already paid.
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The speed of the closure and the lack of explanation have people like Janetta Thompson at a loss.
“What are the parents going to do? What are the teachers going to do? And for me, I’m both. What am I gonna do?” Thompson said.
Thompson worked at Kid City’s Wilson location on and off for much of the last year, taking a break to have her now four-month-old daughter, Aviyanna.
She and multiple other employees told WRAL News they’re owed three weeks' pay and haven’t received any word on if, or when, that money is coming. Attempts to call or email the company, or its CEO, Audrey Bruner, have gone unanswered.
“No reply, no response. Absolutely nothing,” Thompson said.
Parents at Kid City USA also tell WRAL they had prepaid tuition and haven’t received notice about any possible refunds.
“All the parents contacted corporate once we found out,” said mom, Haley Williams. “We called every number possible, including the CEO directly, all Thursday afternoon and all day Friday, of course, with no response. We left messages…even through the weekend and still got nobody.”
According to their website, Kid City USA has more than 100 locations across the US, with nearly a dozen in North Carolina.
This isn’t the first sudden closure the company has dealt with. Earlier this month, parents began sounding the alarm on Facebook, saying Kid City USA’s Cornelius, NC, location had also closed suddenly, without notice.
The company has also found itself in recent hot water with the federal government. According to records obtained by WRAL, earlier this year, the IRS filed two tax liens against the CEO and the company worth $2.05 million.
It's not clear if those liens are related to the recent closures.
For her part, Janetta Thompson says she doesn’t need to know why the daycare shut down in Wilson, but she does want Kid City USA to make this right.
“Stop doing this to people. Because it’s cold-hearted. It’s cold-hearted to leave this many people without answers,” Thompson said.
WRAL reached out to Kid City USA and its CEO, Audrey Bruner, multiple times on Tuesday. Neither Bruner nor the company has responded.