Wellington Preschool Owner Loses $40,000 to State Bureaucracy

Gina Wallick sent more than 50 emails. She got zero paperwork back.

That is the reality of running a universal preschool site in Colorado right now. Wallick, who took over a childcare center in Wellington earlier this year, is trying to keep Bee Curious Early Learning Center alive. The center has been open since August, filled with kids learning their letters and coloring pumpkins. It looks like a normal, healthy classroom. But behind the scenes, the administrative machinery is grinding to a halt.

The problem isn’t a lack of interest. It’s a lack of response from the Colorado Department of Early Childhood. Wallick has been trying to register her center as a universal preschool site. For months, her only communication has been an automatic email reply stating the help desk received her inquiry and “will be in contact within 5 business days.” In practice, that window stretched into weeks, then months. The silence has cost her business nearly $40,000 in state funding. It has also driven away potential students and drained the enthusiasm of a woman who has spent 13 years in the industry.

“It’s devastating my business,” Wallick told The Colorado Sun.

She is not alone. The department’s help desk was drowning during the summer enrollment season. According to The Colorado Sun, the team was wading through more than 900 tickets submitted by parents, providers, and school districts across the state. These weren’t trivial complaints. Some providers needed critical documents to operate. Others, like Wallick, were waiting for registration confirmation. Parents were asking about eligibility or requesting schedule changes, like shifting a child from an afternoon to a morning session.

The department has since tried to fix the bottleneck. They added staff and expanded office hours in August. Now, the goal is to respond to tickets within about a day. That is a massive improvement. But the damage was already done. And the incident has reignited a broader argument about how much control the state should have over the program.

Providers and school districts argue they need more autonomy, particularly over enrollment decisions. Right now, if a parent wants to change their child’s schedule, the provider often has to route that request through the state. That creates delays. Districts want to be able to make those adjustments immediately, without waiting for state approval. The question is whether the state is managing too much of the operational side, leaving local providers to deal with the consequences of bureaucratic lag.

For now, Wallick is keeping the lights on. She wants to preserve the Wellington center so that as more young families move into the area, they have a reliable, quality spot to send their children. But she is doing it with one eye on her inbox, waiting for a response that might never come. The math is simple: 50 emails, 0 replies, $40,000 lost. Whether that adds up to a sustainable business model is a question only time will answer.