Google plans to close its employee child care centers later this year, impacting two facilities in Mountain View that it rents from the Mountain View Whisman School District.
The tech giant has four locations near its Mountain View campus where it offers child care for employees’ children, all of which it intends to close in August, Google spokesperson Ryan Lamont told this news organization.
The sites offer about 300 enrollment slots, Lamont said. He would not release the locations of the child care centers, citing the safety of parents and children. However, the California Department of Social Services’ search portal for child care facilities showed two locations licensed to Google in Mountain View, one in Sunnyvale and one in Palo Alto.
The two Mountain View centers are both leased from the Mountain View Whisman School District – one at Theuerkauf Elementary School and another at the former Slater Elementary School campus, which the district closed in 2006.
9to5Google, a tech-focused website, first reported the news of the child care closures last month.
According to Lamont, Google is supporting families in finding alternative child care, as well as offering additional days of subsidized backup child care. The closures will also allow Google to “reinvest in enhancing our parental leave experience globally,” Lamont said in a statement to this news organization.
Google made news this week with the announcement of large-scale layoffs that will impact hundreds of tech workers, including in Mountain View and Sunnyvale.
The tech company sent notices to state and local officials about the staffing cuts, including a letter last month about the closure of the Slater child care facility. According to that letter – which was published by the San Francisco Chronicle – “approximately 73 employees” will be affected by the Slater closure, with the layoffs expected to begin on Aug. 9. SFGate also reported on the child care layoffs.
“We’re grateful for the hard work of our staff and educators, who have done a wonderful job supporting Google parents and families,” Lamont said in an email last month. “We’ll provide faculty with assistance and resources and a generous package – including outplacement services to help them find their next job.”
Between the Slater and Theuerkauf sites, Google pays the Mountain View Whisman School District roughly $3 million annually in rent, according to copies of the lease agreements that the school district shared with this news organization.
The contracts provide that Google can terminate its leases without a fee by giving the school district two years written notice. Lamont declined to say whether Google planned to give this notice.
For its part, the school district confirmed that it was aware of the closures. When asked whether the district plans to seek another tenant, recoup the money in some other way or institute budget cuts, Superintendent Ayindé Rudolph said that those scenarios were possibilities, but declined to provide additional information.
The school board was scheduled to discuss negotiations with Google about the Slater site in closed session at a Thursday, Jan. 11, meeting. Rudolph told the Voice ahead of the meeting that the closed door discussion pertained to an unrelated request from Google about facility updates.
According to the leases, Google began renting space at Slater for its child care operations in 2006 and at Theuerkauf in 2004. The current contracts run through June 30, 2028, unless terminated early.
The Slater site is about 31,000 square feet, including four classrooms buildings, a multi-use room, administrative building, three portables and yard space, the lease states. Google rents a smaller space at Theuerkauf, with three portables and outdoor space, totalling roughly 6,300 square feet, according to the lease.
