photo by: University of Kansas

An aerial photo shows Hilltop's main campus along Ousdahl Road in Lawrence.

The KU-run Hilltop Child Development Center has lost more than half its teachers and students in the last year, and now university leaders are questioning the viability of the more than 50-year-old center.

A group of the center’s employees, parents and past parents, though, are questioning something else: The center’s executive director, who has been in place for about a year.

The group earlier this month presented to the center’s board of directors a petition with 170 signatures — including 30 of the center’s 34 teachers — that calls for the removal of executive director Cori Berg, among other changes at the center.

“Hilltop is now losing teachers daily, which has thrown classroom placements for the upcoming academic year into chaos,” the Aug. 4 petition and letter to the board states. “Communication between the administration, teachers and parents is more dysfunctional than ever, and operational policies are changed frequently or disregarded. Cori continues to treat teachers with contempt and parents with condescension or outright hostility.”

The controversy comes approximately one year after state investigators confirmed multiple violations of state licensing requirements at Hilltop, including one incident where a child was sprayed with water as a punishment for talking. Berg joined Hilltop after those incidents occurred, and laid out a plan to eliminate such violations. A recent Journal-World review of the state’s complaint database, however, found the state has confirmed new violations, including one where a teacher forcefully grabbed a child’s wrist.

Organizers of the petition allege Berg has not done enough to rectify such behavior, and has created an atmosphere where staff members are fearful of making complaints.

In a response to the petition, Hilltop’s board last week declined to meet any of the petitioners’ demands currently, but did raise questions about the continued viability of the center. In an email to petition organizers, which was shared with the Journal-World, Hilltop board chair Chari Young — who also is KU’s chief human resources officer — said the board currently is assessing “Hilltop’s facilities infrastructure and significant financial challenges facing the center.”

“As we continue to assess the future of Hilltop, we request your patience and support for the processes we are working through,” Young said via the email.

In response to the stated financial difficulties, the Journal-World specifically asked KU leaders whether the prospect of closing Hilltop is being considered. A spokesman for the university declined to rule out that possibility.

“As stated in our response to the petitioners, we are assessing Hilltop’s facilities infrastructure and significant financial challenges facing the center,” KU spokesman Joe Monaco told the Journal-World via email.

The financial challenges of the center may grow in the coming days. The petition delivered to the board said the individuals signing the petition would refuse to pay tuition for the school year — in the case of parents — and would refuse to teach — in the case of teachers. The center’s after-school program is scheduled to begin on Thursday, and the first day for the center’s early childhood program is scheduled for Monday.

KU officials this week voiced public support for Berg, Hilltop’s executive director.

“We fully support Cori’s efforts as Hilltop’s executive director,” Monaco told the Journal-World.

An attempt to reach Berg for comment on Wednesday wasn’t immediately successful.

As for the other demands that the petitioners have made, they include: a change in process to hold an election that ensures both parent and teacher representation on Hilltop’s board of directors, which currently is largely filled by KU administrators; assurances that there are parent and teacher representatives on any future committee tasked with hiring an executive director; reinstatement of a “Teacher Board” program at Hilltop and an associated teacher mentoring program; and a revision to Hilltop’s personnel policies regarding “whistleblower protections, and policies governing communication, pay and retention.”

Monaco said the board hasn’t yet made decisions about any of those particular demands.

“We don’t necessarily oppose or support the petitioners’ demands,” Monaco told the Journal-World via email. “As explained in our response, we are working to address these matters through established university and board processes designed to gather input broadly, review issues carefully and support the full Hilltop community.”

photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Hilltop Child Development Center, 1652 Ousdahl Road, is pictured Monday, April 7, 2025.

Exodus of students, staff

Organizers of the petition said they determined through a source at the center that Hilltop’s fall enrollment had dropped to 168 students, down from normal enrollment of 400 students. The organizers also said the center had lost 51 teachers in a one-year period, which organizers claimed was more than half the center’s instructional staff.

KU officials did not dispute the numbers after the Journal-World told them that organizers were stating such declines had occurred. Rather, Monaco said Hilltop had been impacted by “broader demographic and economic trends,” including changes in the regional supply and demand for childcare. Plus, Monaco said recruiting and retaining employees in the childcare industry had become more difficult in general.

“At the same time, recruiting and retaining qualified childcare educators has become increasingly challenging as providers face competition for a limited workforce and the broader childcare sector continues to grapple with the costs of providing quality care and competitive wages,” Monaco said. “KU continues to assess these trends and look for ways to maintain a sustainable childcare program for the community.”

The downturn in paid enrollment — which is the primary way the center pays for itself — comes at a time when Hilltop expanded from one facility to two, meaning the center faces more operational expenses.

Hilltop — which was founded in 1972 as part of the February Sisters Movement that called attention to a lack of campus childcare — historically operated with just a single location near KU’s main campus. In May 2024, Hilltop opened a new location on KU’s West Campus as part of the university’s effort to turn the area around Innovation Park into a new live, work, play district. The new facility increased Hilltop’s licensed capacity by about 40% or by more than 140 children. It is unclear how much the second location has added to Hilltop’s expenses.

According to state licensing records, Hilltop’s main facility on Ousdahl Road and its West Campus facility are licensed to serve a total of 447 children. With enrollment at 168 students, the organization would be operating at less than 40% capacity.

photo by: University of Kansas

Cori Berg

New violations

When Berg, Hilltop’s executive director, began her job in June 2025, she began to immediately address with staff the violations state inspectors had confirmed. According to a recording of a staff meeting obtained by the Journal-World, Berg forcefully told staff members actions needed to change. In regards to the incident that involved a child being sprayed with a water bottle as punishment for talking, Berg provided a blunt reminder to staff: “Children are not pets.”

In addition to the water bottle incident, state investigators also determined that violations occurred in April 2025 when a 5-year-old child was inadvertently left in a van unattended for an extended period time while the rest of the class and teachers were on a field trip. Other incidents cited by state investigators in 2025 involved a teacher inappropriately grabbing a student as a form of corporal punishment, verbal abuse that involved a teacher instructing a class to watch a student cry, and a teacher pulling chairs out from beneath students so that they fell to the floor.

Monaco told the Journal-World this week that Berg was providing good leadership to Hilltop in the wake of those incidents.

“Cori is currently managing various challenges, including many that pre-date her arrival at Hilltop, and we appreciate her leadership,” Monaco said via email.

A Journal-World review this week of the state database for childcare licensing violations, however, showed that Hilltop has had 15 licensing violations confirmed by state inspectors in the year since Berg began. At least one of those violations included an incident of a teacher inappropriately grabbing the wrist of a child, and several incidents of children being left unsupervised.

Additionally a former parent of a Hilltop student and a former teacher at the center both told the Journal-World of incidents where they questioned Berg’s judgment or actions regarding abuse allegations at Hilltop.

Perry Schroeder, the former operations coordinator at Hilltop, said she resigned her position at the center in 2025 after she was chided by Berg for advising a Hilltop teacher to make a suspected abuse complaint to state investigators.

Schroeder said there had been concern at Hilltop that a particular teacher had become too aggressive with tactics in the classroom. Eventually, a separate teacher observed the teacher in question grab a student “very aggressively.” When the teacher asked Schroeder how to proceed, Schroeder said the teacher’s role as a mandated reporter made it clear that the state’s Department for Children and Families needed to be notified of the incident.

Schroeder then told Berg of what the teacher had observed and that she had advised the observing teacher to report the matter to the state. Schroeder said Berg said that wasn’t the right course of action. Berg, according to Schroeder, said a report shouldn’t be filed because “we don’t know what happened.”

Schroeder said Berg then asked to see Schroeder’s phone so that she could see any text messages that Schroeder had sent to the observing teacher. Schroeder said she agreed to show Berg a screenshot of the text message she had sent the observing teacher with the advice of filing a report. However, Berg said that wasn’t sufficient and that she wanted access to Schroeder’s actual phone to examine messages. Schroeder rejected that request as unreasonable, and she said that the observing teacher also rejected a similar request from Berg.

Schroeder said the teacher whose tactics were in question no longer works at Hilltop, but Schroeder was unsure whether a state investigation had ever been started on the matter.

There is one state investigative file from the past year that does involve a teacher inappropriately grabbing a student. A November investigation found that “prohibited punishment occurred when a staff member grabbed a child’s wrist aggressively on the playground.”

Lawrence resident Danon Taylor told the Journal-World this week that the incident involved her child who attended Hilltop at the time. Taylor said she learned of the incident from another teacher at the school, who was not authorized to provide the information but did so anyway because the teacher suspected Hilltop’s administration had not notified Taylor of the incident.

Taylor confronted Berg about the incident, but Berg said she was not aware of the matter. Taylor believes that to be untrue, as she had been told by three separate teachers of the incident.

“I was furious that incidents were happening with my son and they were not communicating it with me,” said Taylor, who ended up having other interactions with Berg over whether Taylor’s son should be expelled from Hilltop.

Taylor said communication has been an overriding concern among many Hilltop parents.

“It is a complete lack of accountability, transparency, and then oversight of the people who are in charge,” Taylor said of the center.

An attempt to reach Berg for comment about the alleged incidents was unsuccessful on Wednesday. The Journal-World did give KU officials a chance to respond to the alleged incidents. Monaco said via email that KU is not able to talk about alleged incidents involving Hilltop students, families or staff.

However, Monaco said KU continues to communicate to families that KU is “committed to improving Hilltop’s operations, with a particular focus on strengthening organizational oversight and staff training.”

Monaco also said Hilltop leadership believes the center’s compliance with state regulations has improved during the past year under Berg’s leadership.

“Our goal is to ensure Hilltop provides the high-quality care and supportive environment that children and families deserve,” Monaco said.