Stories about abuse at SmallTrans Bears daycare had surfaced before, but a mysterious series of text messages sent to parents with children at the downtown Oakland facility mentioned details that were hard to dismiss as just rumor.
The anonymous sender reached out in early summer with a warning to parents on the group thread that workers — including the owner, Cynthia Jackson Burns — punished crying toddlers by hitting them with bare hands, spanking them with a wooden spoon, whipping them with wet towels, and leaving them alone in a dark bathroom.
“Children are being pinched, thrown around, grabbed aggressively and their belongings are being thrown around as well,” the sender wrote.
Jackson Burns once drew blood by hitting a girl in the mouth three times, the tipster said, then pressured an employee to lie by saying the child had fallen. If the boss dislikes a child, the texts alleged, she feeds them cold food.
Within a few days, most of the daycare’s several dozen families had pulled out. Jackson Burns tried to stem the tide in a virtual meeting at which she blamed the allegations on someone trying to ruin the daycare’s reputation, such as a disgruntled ex-staffer.
That defense didn’t ring true to parents, who had exchanged days of urgent messages in a WhatsApp group about how to hold Jackson Burns accountable.
It also failed to persuade California’s daycare regulators, who yanked the SmallTrans Bears license, identified Jackson Burns as personally involved in hurting kids, and barred her from ever working with children. The child abuse claims have given rise to a criminal investigation, according to witnesses interviewed in the case.
The rapid turn of events left dozens of parents scrambling to make daycare arrangements — and looking back for missed signs that their children were being mistreated.
Jackson Burns didn’t respond to requests for comment to multiple phone numbers and email addresses; the daycare’s landline went unanswered.
‘They were getting spanked’
The first signs of trouble came about two years ago, soon after Jackson Burns replaced a long-standing daycare in the Caltrans building on Grand Avenue.
Complaints about SmallTrans Bears staff being disrespectful and physically rough with kids prompted an investigation by the Community Care and Licensing Division, the state agency that regulates child-care providers. But after interviewing the director, employees, and parents, the agency said in an August 2022 report that it couldn’t substantiate the claims.
Nearly two years would pass before the agency paid another visit. Meanwhile, informal complaints occasionally cropped up online in parenting forums or review sites.
“I enrolled my daughter in Smalltrans daycare due to its convenient location and promising initial impression,” Safy A. wrote in a May 7 post on the SmallTrans Yelp page. “The owner, Cynthia, seemed welcoming, and my daughter was excited about the space and toys. However, our experience quickly soured when my daughter disclosed being spanked by a teacher.”
The parent said Jackson Burns deflected blame by saying the toddler needed therapy, which “raised additional red flags” and showed “a lack of understanding.”
The anonymous texts came soon after.
“It just snowballed from there,” one of the recipients told The Standard.
The tipster, who turned out to be a parent, named enough names for families to dig deeper. Though parents say they never saw video of the abuse, junior staffers helped them piece things together — sometimes with visual clues, like a photo of the wooden spoon allegedly used to spank toddlers.
“That really freaked me out,” one of the moms said. “It’s in this assortment of stuff in the background,” she added of the spoon, “and there are these Minnie Mouse shoes next to it.”
The Community Care and Licensing Division stopped by SmallTrans Bears for a surprise visit June 18 but cut it short “due to time constraints.” When officials came back later that month, they issued four citations, including for failure to fill out sleep logs required to confirm that babies are monitored at frequent intervals and failure to test for lead in drinking water.
The findings grew more damning.
On July 18, licensing authorities cited SmallTrans Bears for a litany of violations. They said Jackson Burns employed staff without required credentials and prevented parents from entering the facility, which violated their rights under state law. She was cited for not repairing a leak, for letting babies sleep on the floor, and for failing to meet state-set classroom ratios.
On multiple occasions, state officials alleged in their July report, Jackson Burns “spanked, hit, or used other methods of corporal punishment on children in care” and “allowed staff members to do the same.”
“Based on interviews, staff members were hitting, pushing, pulling, yelling, intimidating, calling the children inappropriate names while in care,” authorities wrote, “and staff have left children in the director’s office and in the toddler bathroom as punishment for misbehaving or crying, which is an immediate risk to the health, safety, and personal rights of children in care.”
The state pulled the facility’s license soon after, telling Jackson Burns that, barring an appeal, she wouldn’t be allowed to work in a California child-care facility ever again.
Now, as the criminal investigation continues and parents prepare for civil litigation, some tell The Standard they’re heartened that authorities took the claims seriously. But others say it should have happened much sooner — and might have if someone on staff stepped forward to corroborate the initial allegations in 2022.
But with fewer SmallTrans families talking to one another at the time, it was easy to dismiss warning signs as isolated incidents, parents told The Standard. The sentiment was echoed in comments online.
“As a first-time mom, this place was probably the worst nightmare for me,” an Oakland resident named Jie L. wrote this month on the SmallTrans Bears Yelp page.
She described how she ignored “yellow flags” during her first visit to the facility and “red flags” after she signed up. Over the next two months, Jie L. said, her baby was constantly sick and cried every time she was dropped off. With no frame of reference, however, she said, “I thought this was the life with daycare.”
Several parents told The Standard they were unaware that state law gave them a certain level of access to the facility. One mom pointed out that the pandemic had accustomed them to keeping their distance by dropping kids off at the front door.
“That probably created a blind spot for abuse to happen,” she said. “And it makes me angry that kids got hurt because of that.”