The license for Thomsen Learning Center, a preschool and infant care facility in Ramona, has been ordered revoked after state officials received several complaints, including about the center being over capacity, having unqualified teachers, improper teacher/child ratios and failing to maintain required documentation.
In a revocation ruling May 21, Marion Vomhof, an istrative law judge, also ordered that Pam Thomsen, owner of the center, and her daughter, center director Nicolle “Nickie” Daniels, be prohibited for life from working at facilities licensed by the state Department of Social Services, an action an industry professional labeled as rare.
In her order, the judge pointed to an incident Sept. 29, 2022, in which a 3-year-old girl fell from a bike at the center and suffered a broken arm.
According to testimony in a Department of Social Services hearing last month, neither Thomsen nor Daniels notified the girl’s parents or confirmed that they had been notified promptly so medical care could be provided, the judge wrote.
A teacher at the center, Rozalynn Farley, testified that she put ice on the girl’s arm and reached out to Thomsen and Daniels, saying she was concerned that the girl’s arm may be broken, Vomhof wrote.
“Both dismissed her, stating that she and/or the child were being overdramatic and they did not have the time to deal with this issue,” Vomhof wrote.
In addition, Farley and a visitor to the preschool that day testified that Thomsen grabbed the child’s arm, bent it up and down and said “She’s fine,” according to the document.
Farley and the visitor also said Thomsen yelled at Farley in front of the children, the document stated.
Thomsen told the Ramona Sentinel on Friday that she had not seen the judge’s order. She called the allegations “unfounded” and blamed them on disgruntled competitors, investigators who had a personal vendetta against her, and her family’s status in Ramona. She said her attorney has told her she can appeal.
She has no plans to close the center, she said.
Thomsen’s family is well-known in the community. Her husband, Artie, is the son of Linda and the late Art Thomsen, who until a few years ago oversaw operations at the Ramona Outdoor Community Center, where events such as the Ramona Rodeo, Ramona Junior Fair, Ramona Country Fair and weddings are held.
“When you are a name, you are a big target,” said Pam Thomsen, who has been in the child care business for 42 years. “It’s my turn, and I will do anything I can to save my family business.”
Daniels declined to comment about the revocation.
The order came after a hearing April 15-17 by Vomhof, a judge who works with the state Office of istrative Hearings, which handles cases for state and local agencies.
Vomhof ordered that Thomsen’s license to operate infant and preschool facilities be revoked, and she declined her request to operate a school-age facility. Thomsen ran a school-age facility without a license from Oct. 12 to Dec. 5, 2022, Vomhof wrote.
“The repeated violations and the failure of respondents to either fully comprehend the necessity of complying with department regulations or to accept responsibility for their conduct does not provide the department with the assurance it needs to grant an additional license or to allow respondents to retain their existing licenses,” Vomhof wrote.
“Based on this record as a whole, nothing less than the revocation of respondent Thomsen’s infant and preschool licenses and the exclusion of respondents Thomsen and Daniels from department-licensed facilities shall assure public protection.”
Thomsen Learning Center started as a day care business in a Ramona garage and then moved to a 2,000-square-foot location at 1122 B St.
In July 2022, Thomsen moved the center to its current location, a 6,500-square-foot, two-story building on Earlham Street at the family’s namesake Thomsen Way.
Thomsen and her daughter had big plans for the center.
Daniels told the Sentinel two months after the opening of the Earlham location that they expected to get their school-age license in about two weeks. At that point, they could expand from 44 preschool students to 59 and add 39 school-age students in first through eighth grades, Daniels said. The number of infant clients would remain at 12, so altogether, the facility could serve 110 children starting in October that year, she said.
“The reason we purchased a nice, large building is we didn’t want the children to outgrow it,” Thomsen said in the story. “We’ll have a legacy now because we’ll have a forever home.”
But since the move, the facility has received several citations requiring follow-up inspections, as well as complaints that required investigation, the judge stated.
Among the statements in Vomhof’s order:
- During a visit to the facility on Feb. 14, 2023, Patrick Ma, a licensing program analyst for the Community Care Licensing Division of the Social Services Department, observed nine infants being cared for in a room by two aides and one teacher who was not fully qualified. The required teacher-to-infant ratio is 1-to-4.
- On Oct. 12, 2022, during an unannounced visit to initiate an investigation prompted by a complaint received eight days earlier, Ma and Selena Siao, another licensing program analyst, found that the facility had no documentation of tuberculosis screening and immunization records for two employees.
- Thomsen permitted five employees of the preschool facility and two employees of the infant facility to care for children without being immunized against influenza, pertussis (whooping cough) and/or measles, in violation of sections of the state Health and Safety Code.
- Thomsen continued to run a school-age program after receiving a cease-and-desist order Oct. 12, 2022, that came after an investigator found eight children ages 5-7 in a classroom on the second floor, which itself was not licensed for child care. During a visit about two weeks later, Ma found Daniels upstairs with 15 children despite the cease-and-desist order. And on Nov. 2, Daniels was found with 16 school-age children in the upstairs classroom.
Daniels was the teacher of the unlicensed school-age program, according to the document.
She “did not seem to understand the department requirement that there must always be a director in charge, and that director cannot also be teaching in a classroom,” Vomhof wrote.
A non-compliance conference was held Nov. 16, 2022, with Daniels, Ma and other licensing officials. Thomsen did not attend. They discussed the violations at the time as well as violations at a previous location, the document stated. At the end of the conference, Daniels agreed to more training for staff.
But, the judge wrote, the violations continued and on April 19, 2023, the department began license revocation actions, which eventually resulted in last month’s hearing.
Thomsen said Friday that she has “never not complied with licensing.”
“I’ve done everything they asked,” she said. “Until two years ago, I’ve always had a good relationship with licensing. I feel like licensing has really changed the way they do business. They are lost as the way they do things. You try to keep up with it and do the best we can.”
On the day the 3-year-old’s arm was broken in the fall, Thomsen and Daniels were dealing with the news that Art Thomsen had died.
“People were mourning him and bringing flowers,” Thomsen said.
Thomsen said she did not see the child fall, and she denied that she grabbed the girl’s arm.
“The child started waving her arm around,” she said. “I never grabbed it. I would never hurt a child.”
She said she did tell Farley to “calm down.”
“I might have said it too harshly because she was upsetting everyone in the room,” Thomsen said.
Thomsen left the center for the mortuary before the girl had been taken for medical care, according to the judge’s document.
The girl is the granddaughter of an aide at the center, and the grandmother was waiting for the father to arrive to take the girl for treatment, the document said.
The girl’s mother testified at the hearing that she had signed a release for the center to provide and obtain medical care for her daughter.
The Sentinel typically does not identify minors involved in legal cases so is not naming the girl or her family .
“I would have changed a million things, but I did not want to override the grandmother,” Thomsen said. “I kept asking multiple times when the parents would be there.”
Thomsen said “I didn’t like the way they handled it. I fired them.”
She didn’t specify whom she was referring to, but Farley and the grandmother are no longer working at the center.
The grandmother testified that she told Thomsen she did not want to work there anymore because she didn’t feel comfortable. She then received a text message from Thomsen and Daniels saying she was no longer needed.
Farley testified that she returned to work the day after the girl was injured. She said Thomsen told her she was not going to report the incident and if there were issues, Farley would be blamed. Farley testified that she told Thomsen, “I’m not going to work here,” and she left the facility.
Vomhof wrote that Thomsen and Daniels failed to take full responsibility for the violations of rules and regulations.
“They provided excuses for their conduct and the violations … including that they moved too quickly and did not have time to organize their files; the complaints were filed by disgruntled competitors; they operated the school-age program without a license because licensing was too slow … and [licensing program analyst] Ma was out to get them.”
Nina Buthee, executive director of the nonprofit EveryChild California, said she had never heard of an order such as the one prohibiting Thomsen and Daniels from working at facilities licensed by the Social Services Department.
“This means they have had numerous citations about the same thing and they have not addressed it,” according to Buthee, who said EveryChild California does policy and advocacy work primarily for subsidized child care centers, which must be licensed. “This is repeated bad behavior — extreme.”
“Community licensing are not in the business to put people out of business but to put children in a safe space,” Buthee said.
