Latest on the Remnant Academy/Church Rift

Staff from the recentlyclosed Remnant Academy daycare said they were locked out of the building while trying to move out last week.

Leticia Fonville, director of The Remnant Academy (TRA), said Pastor Kolbe Hill of The Remnant Church (TRC) changed the locks to the building on Wednesday, June 5.

The Record spoke to Hill on Friday, but he declined to comment publicly about the dispute between TRA and TRC.

TRA closed last month after it was unable to reach a new lease agreement with TRC, which owns the childcare facility. TRA provided one of the more affordable childcare options in what many consider an underserved market. Nearly 100 local families relied on TRA for childcare before the facility announcing it was closing, Fonville said.

Fonville said she and her staff were eventually able to enter the building on Wednesday to retrieve their belongings, but only after an intervention by retired TRC pastor and church co-founder Jan Hill, who is Kolbe Hill’s mother-in-law.

“We’ve gifted a bunch of our stuff to daycares in the surrounding community, even in Smithville and Giddings,” Fonville said on Wednesday. “We’re selling stuff for supercheap. We got a lot of it out already, but there were eight classrooms full of stuff.”

Fonville said she hopes TRC considers re-opening the daycare under different management, even though she and the other workers have lost their jobs.

“The facility is in good shape and it’s completely paid off,” she said. “So if The Remnant Church chooses to reopen daycare, they can continue this ministry of providing low-cost childcare to the community. They have the facility for it. They don’t have the overhead because it was all paid off by The Remnant Academy. They could do it if they wanted to, if they wanted to put in the work.”

The Record asked Pastor Hill on Friday if the church is interested in reopening the daycare facility. Hill said he would consider responding, but he had not done so by the time this paper went to press.