Leawood home is ‘safe place’ for kids with special needs. HOA may shut it down

Joe Arthur and his wife moved to Leawood from the East Coast shortly after their first child was born between 2021 and 2022.

Immediately, they began looking for a child care provider that could be a good fit for their son. As a child with special needs, he had had challenges in a previous child care center.

“He’d draw on himself, he’d been bitten by another kid or he bit another kid,” Arthur said.

Eventually, the couple found a licensed, in-home child care center that focused on Montessori practices, which emphasize self-directed activities.

“Montessori has a bit more flexibility, if (he’s) getting frustrated with letters, let’s try drawing shapes, math or books to read,” Arthur said. “He’s really into reading, so he’ll pour through pages. That kind of flexibility is really what we’re looking for.”

“We’ve visited a couple of other Montessori schools a bit away and we really didn’t get the warm-fuzzies as we did here.”

The in-home center that gave the Arthurs the “warm-fuzzies” happened to also be right near their home and run by their neighbor, Buddhika Kimmanthudawa, who lives in the Woods At Ironhorse neighborhood in Leawood off of 153rd Terrace and Nall Avenue on the border of Overland Park.

Arthur says the transition to Kimmanthudawa’s care was a “night and day difference” for his son, who has been going there for three years. He now sends his 2-year-old daughter there too.

But that may not be an option for much longer.

Kimmanthudawa is facing legal threats from The Woods At Ironhorse Homes Association board of directors — which claims that she can’t operate her business out of her home based on the HOA’s bylaws and restrictions, and that the traffic impacts are disrupting the neighborhood.

During a special HOA meeting on Monday, the board of directors decided that they would consult with a lawyer to see what legal options they have.

At a time when Kansas is facing a severe child care shortage and parents have a hard time finding affordable, nearby options, some neighbors with and without kids of their own are worried about the repercussions of shutting down the center.

Kimmanthudawa said she wants to see better protections for family child care providers, both at the state and HOA level.

“I just want to bring awareness to the home day cares and family child cares and being able to work within an HOA in a peaceful manner,” she said. “That’s it.”

Rules and protections

Many neighbors told The Star after the meeting that they didn’t understand why the HOA couldn’t change its bylaws instead of trying to force Kimmanthudawa to close.

The Woods At Ironhorse Homes Association’s declaration of restrictions — more commonly referred to as bylaws — include that property must be used for residential purposes only, not to operate a business. All homeowners are required to join the HOA, pay dues and adhere to its bylaws when they purchase a home in the neighborhood.

While it is possible to change the restrictions, HOA president Mark Bodine said that would require 75% of homeowners to approve the change. He added that it might not be fair to other homeowners in the neighborhood — including others who had to close home businesses because of the bylaws — to adjust the rules now.

“People like the business, but it is absolutely against the covenants of when people buy their property that they are subject to,” Bodine said.

“I appreciate their predicament. I like the (family), they’re great people. But if I was to run a business that I thought was a reasonable business to run out of a neighborhood, maybe my neighbor would disagree that, you know, new cars are coming and going all day and hours of the night when they thought they were buying a house in a residential neighborhood.”

Other homeowners who have operated businesses voluntarily moved their businesses out of their homes after the board sent them letters, he said.

“We felt it was unfair to allow them to continue operating their business in violation of the declaration of restrictions after telling other people they can’t do it and getting their compliance,” Bodine said.

‘My son needed me’

Kimmanthudawa moved to Leawood in 2008 and worked at a Montessori school owned and operated by a family member on State Line Road. She worked in the school until her son, Duvi, who was born with cerebral palsy and other special needs, needed more assistance at home.

“I felt really guilty about not being able to focus on the classroom when my son needed me,” she said.

Speech, cognitive, behavioral and physical therapists come to the home to help Duvi every week.

“That’s when we decided that one of us had to stay home. My husband stayed home for nine years,” she said. “We decided ‘Let’s start a classroom here,’ in 2018, so whenever the school can’t do it, he can come home and there are children and there’s a caregiver.”

She obtained the required licenses from the state of Kansas and the city of Leawood to operate a family child care home, and she serves six kids at a time. While Kansas recently changed the law to allow more, she decided against adding more kids to her space for their safety.

Her husband built all of the shelves that now hold toys, puzzles and supplies. The dining area by her kitchen has flags from all around the world hanging on the ceiling and little tables where kids can do activities.

Kimmanthudawa said the day care has given her the flexibility to still care for her son while earning an income.

“I’m very concerned for my son, what’s going to happen to him,” Kimmanthudawa said about the looming legal threats, adding that the therapies he receives aren’t all available at the school. “He’s a nonverbal child and he needs a lot of help … He’s 16 but he’s like a 2-year-old.”

“He’s going to regress … because of some people complaining, that’s not right. It’s going to be huge for him and I have to somehow find a way to do it.”

Three years of tension

The HOA sent Kimmanthudawa her first letter in 2022 about concerns with traffic and her operating a business out of her home. Bodine said that the HOA wanted to try to resolve the concerns informally and come to a resolution.

At the time, Kimmanthudawa said she looked for a space to rent to launch her own classroom and center, but costs prohibited her from moving forward. She worked with neighbors to park on the north side of the street and other neighbors offered their driveways to help lower the traffic impacts.

She said she hadn’t heard from anyone again until this month.

“We still have the same problems, no real development with the school moving so we sent another letter in July 2025 that repeated our letter in July 2022, with the caveat that we don’t want you to see you open up a fall semester at the school and contact me if we can work it out again,” Bodine said.

Kimmanthudawa’s husband, Kishan Moonesinghe, reached out to Bodine and shared more about the challenges they’ve faced and said they’re trying to find a new place to host their day care.

“I said, ‘We appreciate your efforts. We said we’d give you time, and I think three years is a fair limit,’” Bodine said. “So flash forward to September of 2025 and the board has found they opened the school for the fall semester.”

HOAs vs. Kansas’ child care shortage

Other family child care homes have been facing similar problems with HOAs, particularly in Johnson County, said Eldonna Chesnut, Johnson County Department of Health and Environment’s division director of child care licensing.

“Periodically, we’ll have providers call and say their HOA wants them to shut down and wants to restrict them more than (state) regulations require,” Chesnut said. “It’s sad when there’s a restriction, especially when it’s a good provider, but we can’t control that. We can’t make the HOA do anything different.”

Kimmanthudawa said she’s been frustrated to not be able to find help to navigate the legal barriers that could stop her from providing a desperately needed service in a community without enough child care centers.

“We are told we are so important, we don’t want you to quit, but there is no help when something happens,” she said.

Johnson County is currently only meeting 56% of its child care needs, with 14,295 additional slots needed to serve everyone, according to Child Care Aware of Kansas — a nonprofit that collects data and information on child care in the state.

But state resources don’t have any authority over an HOA to help open up more spots, Chesnut said. Instead, the department’s role is to support child care providers.

“When somebody is first wanting to start a family child care home, we talk to them right up front. Not only do you need to meet the regulations … you need to contact your city and if you live in a neighborhood with an HOA, contact your HOA,” Chesnut said. “We try to set them off on the right path when they start.”

To her knowledge, the state has no new laws in place that could allow in-home child care providers to operate within an HOA that bans such businesses.

The city of Leawood allows licensed day care providers to have up to six children in a resident’s home at one time, according to the Leawood Development Ordinance.

While they can’t do much when providers face HOA troubles, Chesnut said that it’s important that all categories of licensed child care exist.

“If we can offer quality, affordable, safe child care we can make it better for our community so our kids are in quality settings, and make us a better community,” she said.

Neighbor pushback

Beth Brandel has lived in the Leawood neighborhood for 26 years, and has known Kimmanthudawa’s family since they moved in. She said she’s never had an issue living near a day care.

“I office from home and I think it’s delightful when the kids are outside, they are well-behaved, having a good time. It’s just nice and sweet to hear kids playing,” she said.

She was one of the neighbors who advocated for Kimmanthudawa during Monday’s meeting and shared some concerns about the HOA pursuing legal action.

“I wanted to know how much money they were spending on an attorney, and where the money was coming from,” Brandel said. “I asked what are the city codes regarding this type of business and they claimed to not know.”

With no reserves or funds designated for legal action, she worried the HOA would need to increase member fees higher than the annual $550 to cover the costs of any litigation.

“Any time they are going to raise dues, they take a vote to the entire membership,” she said. “Basically asking the neighborhood to foot the bill to sue our neighbors.”

Holly Pahulu, Kimmanthudawa’s next door neighbor, also attended Monday’s meeting to support the home that became a safe haven for her now 9-year-old daughter.

“I think I’m disappointed in the board looking at this as a black and white issue and not seeing the grey,” Pahulu said. “What’s in the grey area is what the benefits are to this neighborhood and to the surrounding community and not taking into consideration the cost we are going to get as homeowners.”

As homeowners face rising costs in gas, groceries and child care, Pahulu said it doesn’t make sense to cost homeowners additional money when changing the bylaws could be a more affordable option.

“At a time where child care is scarce and so expensive, to have a safe, affordable option close to home, it’s invaluable,” she said.

Additionally, Pahulu doesn’t want to lose sight of how the closure could impact young kids at the end of the day.

“There’s a real cost there with the children that this is their safe place, it’s where they can be safe and learn and this is their community,” she said. “Where they find their community is in this classroom.”

This story was originally published October 17, 2025 at 5:28 AM.