Eye on Small Business: Anna & Jack’s Treehouse

“Eleven years of hard-learned mistakes,” as Christina Rubicco put it, have paid off to make her and her husband, Rob Rubicco, owners of the Anna & Jack’s Treehouse day-care and preschool centers – as well as local luminaries in the field of early education. Their established day-care centers in New Rochelle and Pelham continuously draw plaudits from parents and local educators.

“Education is my life,” said Christina, whose passion for educating children started when she was still a teenager herself, leading to a Bachelor of Science in early childhood and elementary education and a Master of Arts degree in literacy in education from Iona College (now University) in New Rochelle, along with 10-years experience as a kindergarten teacher.

The couple recently announced that the Treehouse had “branched off” to launch a new location in Larchmont. Named for the pair’s first two children — they now have four — the Treehouse is an engaging, safe and developmentally supportive indoor play-space designed for children ages six months to six years to explore, socialize and learn through imaginative play.

For the new branch, Christina and Rob said they “listened to their gut” — in contrast to their previous launches and expansions, when they had “listened to others” — and designed every inch of the layout themselves, making countless tweaks, even during the build-out. For instance, with roughly 30,000 square feet at their disposal, they could have easily made 30 classrooms, Christina said, but chose instead to make 16 over two floors, with plenty of play and common areas, in order to keep the space friendly and “intimate.”

While the Treehouse is a for-profit business, the Rubiccos have a keen sense of community and giving back. “We’ve been blessed with a lot of success in a relativity short period of time,” they told the Westfair Business Journal. “Eleven years ago, we had four teachers and 12 kids in the basement and now it’s 142 teachers and about 315 kids. (We offer) scholarships for folks that can’t afford access to high quality care.”

The Treehouses are known as innovative users of technology, which they take advantage of to educate students and keep them safe. Asked to elaborate, Christina explained how each parent has full access to their camera system and could get a live view of each classroom and play area. Additionally, she said, the PB&J TV camera system uses AI for advanced threat detection and will alert police if it detects someone holding a weapon.

On the key question of affordability, the Rubiccos bemoaned the lack of grants that would make childcare more accessible generally, by helping to offset their No. 1 cost, which is payroll. “Our teachers (fully) deserve to make the dollars they do, but there is only so much we can charge in tuition before we, and other high-end schools, price ourselves out of the market.”

Asked whether increasing regulation around children and childcare in any way hindered what could be done – and achieved – at Anna & Jack’s, Christina was diplomatic. “Well, we never actually followed the regulations – in a good way though,” she said. “For example, the state requires a one-to-four ratio between teachers and infants. We don’t believe that is enough and we typically have one-to-three or even one-to-two ratios. We know we are not the most budget-friendly option out there ,and that’s because we go above and beyond and our families expect to always get the best teachers and care.”

In addition to their above-average staff-to -tudent ratio, Christina and Rob spend time at all the sites each day. Christina oversees the curriculum, teachers, parents and overall care aspects (“the magic,”) while Rob, who graduated from Byram Hills High School in Armonk and is a trained chef with a double major in marketing and business administration from Pace University, oversees finance, enrollment, legal aspects, marketing and human resources – “the money,” as he called it. He quipped that at Anna & Jack’s, he and Christina stay in their respective lanes, which most of the time works well.

But he added that over the past 11 years, he had done almost every job at the Treehouse, except changing diapers. “I have to draw the line somewhere,” he said.