Private equity-owned Right at School loses four California contracts, lays off hundreds
June 4, 2025
Right at School is a before and after school care provider that contracts with school districts in 20 states. In April, Right at School filed Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) notices announcing layoffs of nearly 400 people in California. According to state WARN notice data, 376 child care staff[1] in Hawthorne, Mountain View, Milpitas, and Fairfield-Suisun school districts have been laid off, with permanent layoffs effective in June. ONCAP, the private equity vehicle of Canadian firm Onex, acquired Right at School in July 2023.
In May 2025, the Wayne Township School District in New Jersey outsourced after-school care to Right at School, citing a budget shortfall that will pass the costs onto families. The cost for enrolling a single student will increase by 57 percent, from $190 to $298 per month. One parent expressed concerns about Right at School behavior in other districts: “A sales pitch is one thing — their track record is different.”
These two cases follow a string of complaints from families across the country. In 2023, just months after the ONCAP acquisition, parents in Princeton, New Jersey started a petition to immediately remove Right at School after several schools in the district experienced issues within the first few weeks of the company taking over from the local YMCA. The petition claimed that “concerns have arisen due to a small, constantly changing, and deeply unprofessional staff.” One week later, Right at School terminated its contract with the school district.
Right at School has been rapidly expanding over the last few years. At the time of a March 2023 proposal to the Conejo Valley School District, Right at School claimed to provide services for 30,000 students at more than 600 schools. By March 2025, RAS operated 1,000 programs for 60,000 students. The company is a major player in the sector – KinderCare named the Right at School as a competitor of its after-school program in a 2024 SEC filing.
ONCAP pursued an investment in Right at School due to the company’s “opportunity for organic growth given significant whitespace and fragmented nature of the industry.” This is a classic private equity strategy – invest in a sector that primarily contains small, local businesses (“fragmented”) and rapidly acquire them, consolidating the sector and creating national programs of scale in the name of efficiency. This strategy is particularly harmful in sectors such as education, in which student outcomes are largely tied to hyperlocal factors. A commitment to and knowledge of the community is incredibly important for school district staff and vendors, and outsourcing key services to national companies driven by profit are unlikely to provide the same level of dedication.
A 2023 contract between Right at School and Conejo Valley School District in California revealed some of the ways that the company offers financial cost savings to schools, perhaps at the cost of quality. For example, Right at School only requires that program managers have CPR certification, and that at least one person on-site be CPR certified, while Conejo Valley requires that all child care staff for the program–both managers and staff– have their certification.
Right at School continues to operate in more than two dozen other districts in California. However, its recent loss of contracts could signify that the company may eventually find the limit to its expansion. As in Princeton, parents in Bullitt County, Kentucky were surprised to learn that the district was switching to the for-profit company after the YMCA had provided care services for over 30 years.
As more parents and advocates around the country are highlighting concerns about private equity tactics and their effects on children and families, districts should thoroughly investigate the means that private equity owned centers achieve cost savings and make sure that parents and elected officials are educated about any change in quality or increased expenses that families might experience.
[1] See WARN data here: Right at School Layoffs.xlsx
