What Happened to Guidepost Montessori Teachers After the 440 Million Dollar Collapse

A chain of preschools lost 440 million dollars and closed about 60 schools, and the people who taught in them are the part of the story that mostly went unreported. The New York Times published a reconstruction this month in which reporter Claire Suddath interviewed more than two dozen people associated with Higher Ground Education and its Guidepost Montessori schools, including parents, teachers, administrators, corporate staff and executives. At Metaintro we read a collapse like this for what it did to the payroll. If you teach in early years, the useful material here is about notice, records and where the licensed demand went.

What happened

The scale first, because it explains the speed. The New York Times reports that the schools appeared to be successful, with 150 locations that served tens of thousands of children, while running up an astonishing 440 million dollars in losses. It reports that the parent company Higher Ground Education filed for bankruptcy in June 2025 and shuttered about 60 schools, and that by the end some Guidepost locations were losing 50,000 dollars a month. The founder raised 335 million dollars from investors, including venture capital and private equity firms, according to the same report.

This is a reconstruction rather than breaking news, and the distinction matters if you are searching. The filing is over a year old. The 74 recorded at the time that Guidepost Montessori's parent company, Higher Ground Education, voluntarily filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on June 17, 2025. Earlier in 2025, The 74 counted at least 16 closures reported by local news outlets since the beginning of 2025, including all five active sites in Colorado as well as three sites in Ohio, two in Iowa, two in Minnesota, and sites in Missouri, Oklahoma, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

The closures were fast and families were told late. The New York Times reports that in Oregon parents received an email notification on a Sunday afternoon that their school effectively no longer existed, and that in Wisconsin a father went to drop off his 5-month-old son at a Guidepost only to find it had closed. For the teachers in those rooms, a closure like that ends the income and removes the chance to say goodbye to a class of children they may have had for a year.

Colorado shows the pattern earlier in the sequence. KDVR reported in February 2025 that the chain would close 6 Colorado locations, impacting 300 students, and that parents had to find another facility for their children by the end of March. Families told the station they appreciated that staff would provide transitional support, assist in the records transfer process and refund deposits, but wished they had received more notice that the schools were closing. Note who was doing that transitional work. The staff at schools that were closing were the people managing the handover for families, while their own jobs were ending.

Then there is the sequence that early educators should look at hardest.

Guidepost Montessori closed two daycare locations in Portland, Oregon shortly after both attempted to unionise, according to Fox News.

Fox News reported in May 2024 that after Tigard teachers announced their intent to unionise in late March and Lloyd teachers prepared to file in early April, the schools were closed April 8. It cited the Portland Tribune describing teachers and parents learning the care facility was closing with less than 24 hours notice. The units were small. Teachers at the Tigard location sought to unionize 17 employees while the Portland location had 11 employees, Fox News reported. The company gave its own reason, and it was not the union. Per the Tribune, administrators notified parents the closures were a temporary three-month measure because the heads of both locations resigned from their posts.

Those two sites shut more than a year before the bankruptcy, so short notice at Guidepost was not only a feature of its final months. Nor were those 2024 closures the behaviour of a healthy company. The Forbes account of the filing quotes the disclosure statement saying the business has never had positive cash flows from operations, resulting in the continuous need for external funding.

Where the coverage agrees, and where it splits

The losses line up. The New York Times puts them at 440 million dollars, and Forbes reports from the disclosure statement that operating losses exceeded a staggering 440 million dollars over the past five years, including monthly corporate costs of 2.5 million dollars. The per-school figure matches too. In a letter to Denver ABC 7 quoted by The 74, Guidepost itself said at many schools, we were running losses of 50,000 dollars plus per month that our creditors were no longer willing to subsidize.

The dates and the closure count do not line up as neatly. The 74 gives June 17, 2025 for the Chapter 11 filing, while Forbes says that on June 27, Higher Ground Education, LLC, filed a pre-arranged Chapter 11 bankruptcy plan with the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Texas. The New York Times counts about 60 schools shuttered. Forbes describes it more broadly, writing that of the family of 150 schools, most of those schools have been shuttered by foreclosure. The 74 quotes the new co-CEO saying the company was in the midst of closing nearly 1/3 of the school communities, a count taken before the filing.

The bigger split is about what kind of story this is. The business coverage treats it as a growth model failure. The New York Times describes a founder who wanted a chain of for-profit schools that would grow at the pace of a tech start-up, and explains that as the company opened schools it often received large advances from landlords to improve their properties, so as long as it kept expanding it seemed from the outside as if it were thriving, but when it came time to repay the landlords and growth was no longer an option, the company collapsed. Forbes adds that in early 2025, HGE defaulted on several key loans and could not secure refinancing or new capital, resulting in the foreclosure and sale of the vast majority of their assets and schools.

The early education press treats it as a child care supply problem. The 74 argued while the closures were still unfolding that the closure of a child care program can be devastating to children, families and the early educators who staff them, and that when programs owned by the same company start closing in rapid succession, it becomes cause for alarm and deserves attention. It also flagged the rent problem early, noting that in December 2024, Guidepost lost a civil judgment in Missouri for nearly 240,000 dollars in non-payment of rent. That framing is the one that names workers at all.

Neither frame settles the labour question, which is how much warning staff actually got, and the record is uneven. The Portland sites closed with less than 24 hours notice, while the Colorado families KDVR spoke to in February 2025 had until the end of March to find another school. The company's own public explanation leaned on difficulty rather than notice. A Higher Ground Education spokesperson told KDVR that when things go well, our teachers and families don't need to think at all about what it takes on the back end to make Montessori accessible.

Some Guidepost locations were losing 50,000 dollars a month by the end, according to The New York Times reconstruction.

There is one more thread worth pulling. Most coverage of the bankruptcy leaves out the Portland sites, because they closed more than a year earlier. The 74 is the outlet that connected them, noting that the 2025 closures follow others that occurred abruptly last year in Virginia and in Oregon, the latter allegedly as a response to staff unionization attempts. Nobody has established that the union efforts caused those two closures, and the company pointed to the resignation of both school heads. Anyone weighing the broader fight over union store closures and worker rights will recognise the question, and an early educator deciding whether organising is safe at a struggling chain deserves to see both facts side by side.

What this means for your job search

Get your licensing file out of the employer's systems today, whatever your employer's condition. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, many states require childcare centers to be licensed, and to qualify for licensure, staff often must pass a background check, have a complete record of immunizations, and meet a minimum training requirement. Much of that paperwork can sit in systems the company controls. Staff at the Colorado sites were asked to assist in the records transfer process for children. Do the same for yourself, and keep your own copies of certifications, training hours, clearances, supervisor references and employment dates somewhere outside the company. If some of those credentials are digital, it helps to know how to make digital credentials count with employers.

Treat notice as a legal question rather than a courtesy you did not get. The U.S. Department of Labor says the federal WARN Act requires employers with 100 or more employees to provide at least 60 calendar days advance written notice of a plant closing and mass layoff affecting 50 or more employees at a single site, and that some states also have their own plant closure laws. The Portland units of 17 and 11 employees reported by Fox News were well below that 50-employee figure, so check your state rules as well as the federal one. The department's WARN guide for workers says that when a covered employer skips required notice, you may be able to seek damages for back pay and benefits for up to 60 days, and that WARN remains applicable to an employer that declares bankruptcy in some circumstances. WARN notice must also go to the state dislocated worker unit, so ask your state labour office whether one was filed. Then file for unemployment benefits promptly, and read why so many laid-off workers skip filing for unemployment so you do not repeat the mistake.

Then use the fact that openings keep coming. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that employment of childcare workers will decline 2 percent from 2025 to 2035, yet about 150,300 openings for childcare workers are projected each year, on average, over the decade, all of them from replacing people who move to other occupations or leave the labour force. The pay floor is low. The BLS puts the median hourly wage for childcare workers at 16.82 dollars in May 2025, so check what preschool teachers make and the childcare salary guide before you accept the first offer. The public school system is a different employer with different pay scales. If you are weighing that switch, the certification requirements that shape teaching salaries are where to start, and there are routes into teaching without an education degree for staff who came up through the classroom rather than through a programme. The BLS also notes that with a couple of years of experience and a bachelor's degree, childcare workers may advance to become a preschool or childcare center director.

My argument is that early educators consistently describe their work in the language of care and almost never in the language of operations, and that costs them money at exactly the wrong moment. Running a licensed classroom means ratio compliance, incident documentation, safeguarding obligations, developmental assessment and daily communication with demanding customers who are also parents. Those are regulated, auditable competencies. Written that way they travel into school systems, paediatric support roles, training and compliance work and family services. Written as a love of children they travel nowhere, and a chain that just collapsed is not going to translate them for you.

The final point is about how you read an employer next time. The warning signs here were public well before the filing. Sites were closing in rapid succession, a landlord had won a rent judgment in Missouri, transitional work was being handed to departing staff, and the company had told Denver ABC 7 that many schools were running losses of 50,000 dollars plus per month. None of that obliges you to leave a job you need. It does mean keeping your credentials current, your records personal and one eye on which employers in your area are hiring, because at Guidepost the Oregon closure email arrived on a Sunday afternoon. Knowing which three employers near you would take your licence tomorrow is not disloyalty. It is the only form of notice you actually control.

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People Also Asked

Q: Why did Guidepost Montessori close so many schools?

A: The New York Times reports the schools ran up 440 million dollars in losses across 150 locations, with the parent company Higher Ground Education filing for bankruptcy in June 2025 and shuttering about 60 schools. It describes a model that relied on large advances from landlords while the chain kept expanding, and collapsed when repayment came due and growth stopped.

Q: How much notice did staff and families get?

A: It varied by site. The New York Times reports Oregon parents received an email on a Sunday afternoon saying their school effectively no longer existed, and Fox News cited a Portland Tribune report that teachers and parents at two Portland area sites learned of a closure with less than 24 hours notice. In Colorado, KDVR reported in February 2025 that parents had until the end of March to find another facility.

Q: Where do early childhood educators go after a chain closes?

A: The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects about 150,300 childcare worker openings a year on average from 2025 to 2035, and public school systems are another route for staff who get certified. The practical constraint is paperwork, so secure your certifications, training hours, clearances and employment dates before you lose access to the company's systems, and ask your state labour office whether a closure notice was filed.

Looking for your next opportunity? Licensed classroom experience, safeguarding knowledge and ratio compliance are in demand across school systems, child care providers and family services, and the educators who move first get the pick of the openings. Metaintro matches education and care professionals to employers hiring now. Create a free profile and start mapping your next move today.