A bustling Manayunk day care is closing because of money. Finding alternatives ‘feels like the Hunger Games,’ one mother said.

Dozens of Philadelphia families were blindsided this week when a childcare center run by a Manayunk Catholic church announced it would close before Labor Day because of money issues.

Holy Family Child Care, Monsignor Patrick E. Sweeney said to parents and employees in a letter, will close because “it gets down to a financial decision for the sake of the larger institution. We need to make use of our resources to sponsor the mission of the church. We have few options to pay for our operating expenses, but to raise money.”

The building that now houses the childcare center, on Fountain Street near the main church, “will be rented for general purposes,” Sweeney wrote. In a meeting with families held Tuesday night, a church staffer said no tenant has yet been found.

The decision to close blindsided families — and staff, including director Ariel Presley, who had grown the program by leaps and bounds in the two years since she took over the center, which cares for children as young as 6 weeks old.

When Presley started working there in 2022, the school was caring for just 10 children; it now has 50, and before the shutdown announcement, had registered even more to begin later this month through next spring. Holy Family also had a waiting list of 25.

The school’s collapse lays bare an industry in crisis — operating margins for early childhood centers are difficult, and the combination of rising costs and understaffing often force families scrambling for scarce spots.

Presley said when Sweeney summoned her and her assistant director to his office on Monday at noon, he said the childcare center had been ordered to close by the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. It was running a $160,000 deficit, Presley said Sweeney told her. Holy Family wouldn’t open after Labor Day, he said. The center’s 17 staff will receive two weeks’ severance, but only if they stay through the last day of operation.

“He said, ‘Ariel, if you choose not to stay until Sept. 2, we have to close the doors.’ I said, ‘I would never do that to my families.’ People love coming here. Babies are happy, they don’t want to leave. I will not turn my back on them,” said Presley.

People at the church meeting also said officials indicated the closure was dictated by the archdiocese.

But Ken Gavin, a spokesperson for the archdiocese, said the decision “was made by the pastor, Monsignor Patrick Sweeney, and not by the archdiocese.”

Families have alternated between heartbreak and fury. Sean Carr, whose 1-year-old daughter, Grace, has attended Holy Family since she was 3 months old, has cycled through both, he said.

Carr has watched Grace “flourish as she develops linguistically, cognitively, socially, emotionally, and physically” at Holy Family, which “exceeds the highest standards of early childhood learning,” he said. He was so perplexed by the abrupt closure announcement that he wrote to Philadelphia Archbishop Nelson J. Pérez to appeal the decision.

Carr, a school administrator and lifelong Catholic himself, told Pérez he understands the need to make tough financial decisions.

But, he wrote, “seemingly no effort was made to increase tuition rates, fundraise, or identify other sources of revenue that could support the continued operation of our beloved school ... it seems as if those who made the decision to close the school were simply focused on short-term financial implications rather than the long-term impact on the school and parish community.”

Katlyn Harrison, Carr’s wife and Grace’s mother, emphasized how disruptive a closure with one month’s notice was for families. Carr and Harrison have made calls and scheduled tours to find a new center for Grace, but “it feels like the Hunger Games for the remaining day care spots,” she said.

The closure also upended Irene Contreras Reyes’ world, she said.

“My baby learned how to crawl, how to walk, how to talk” at Holy Family, said Contreras Reyes. The closure news was a shock, and sent her into a panic because “we don’t have a lot of day care options in Manayunk,” she said — she reserved her son’s spot on the Holy Family waitlist while she was newly pregnant with him.

Contreras Reyes and her husband haven’t found alternative placement for their son yet, despite reaching out to 13 different places. One center said they had a two-year waitlist, and another, which she’s touring, “costs more than my mortgage payment per month.”

Contreras Reyes is also furious at the way things went down — when the parish knew the finances were dire, why didn’t they call on the strong community the center had built to help brainstorm via fundraising or tuition increase?

“This was the worst management that I’ve ever seen,” she said. “It’s devastating, but we are hoping to reach an agreement with the church, the archdiocese. We need responses.”