Childcare Centers Face Tough Choices During Coronavirus Pandemic
Scottdale Early Learning closed it’s programs last month, but teachers use a video-conferencing app called Zoom to keep in touch with their students.
Courtesy of Scottdale Early Learning
Some childcare centers have closed in the face of the coronavirus pandemic. However, quality childcare is still in high demand among essential workers, like healthcare and grocery store employees. According to the Georgia Department of Early Care and Learning, about 2,500 licensed centers in the state have closed. DECAL commissioner Amy Jacobs said about 1,700 centers are still open.
“There’s still access to childcare,” Jacobs says. “We do know enrollment is even down in those 1,700 that are still open, but they’re trying to remain open to try to serve their parents that have to go to work every day.”
Gov. Brian Kemp’s emergency declaration and shelter-in-place order allow childcare centers to stay open. However, it bans gatherings of more than 10 people in one location. Jacobs said, for DECAL, a location is a classroom.
“We are limiting [classrooms] to 10 or less,” she said. “Right now, because enrollment is down, that’s not too much of an issue. It’s definitely a different practice for them, but for the most part, childcare is managing for 10 or less in a classroom.”
To Close Or Not To Close?
Scottdale Early Learning closed last month. CEO and president Maryum Gibson said it was a tough choice to make.
“Many parents were coming in, saying that their schools were closing for their older children and asking if we were going to be closed,” Gibson said. “Some were choosing to keep children home for safety reasons.”
She also heard that federally-funded programs like Head Start and Early Head Start were considering closing.
Despite the closure, Gibson has been able to pay her staff their full salaries even though she isn’t collecting tuition from parents.
“We’ve always had a mission around serving families that are low-income and making sure they have access to high-quality early childhood education programs,” Gibson said.
Parents pay tuition on a sliding scale, Gibson said. Scottdale also receives money from partnerships with DECAL, DeKalb County, the federal Head Start program and foundations and corporations. She said Scottdale has seen a drop in fees, but expenses have also dropped.
“So it’s been hard but, at the same time, because we’re a nonprofit, because we have a lot of partnerships,” Gibson said, “we’ve been able to weather this in a different way than a lot of early learning programs have.”
Those partnerships haven’t subsided since Scottdale’s programs have closed, Yolanda Marroquin, Scottdale’s Director of Community-Based Programs, said.
“We are never losing contact,” Marroquin said. “If we see a food pantry, we send that information out [to parents]. We also do check-in calls with our families. Some families require two calls a week just to say, ‘Hey, how are you? What’s going on? How can I serve you?’”
Staying Connected
Edna Lyon teaches 1-year-olds at Scottdale. Now, she teaches them through Zoom, a video-conferencing application.
“We sing songs, and they have their homemade instruments, while we have the homemade instruments as well…and so we try to give [parents] things to keep the babies in tune or things like that,” she said.
Lyon said she also checks in with parents and gives them activities to keep their kids busy. One day, she came up with a “sock search” kids could do at home.
“You would give them one sock, and you guys would go around the house looking for the match to the other side. And people [were] like, ‘Oh, this is something to do now, it actually helps with their critical thinking skills,’” Lyon said.
Still, Lyon said, teaching remotely isn’t the same.
“I didn’t expect to miss them this much, but I miss them so much,” she said. “I miss everything about them, their little feet, them sleeping. I just miss it.”
Until she returns to work, though, she’s grateful she doesn’t have to worry about money.
“My heart is just full of joy not having to worry about that–about paying the bills, about ‘I don’t know what the next move is’ and to actually have a job that cares,” Lyon said.
Like many centers, Scottdale doesn’t know when it will re-open. That uncertainty can cause anxiety. The state legislature hasn’t yet approved the budget for the upcoming fiscal year, which begins July 1.
“We definitely have some anxiety around that,” Jacobs said. “I remind my team on a regular basis we don’t have an FY2021 budget, and we don’t know that’s going to look like at this point.”
But in the meantime, Jacobs said, upcoming relief from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act should help. DECAL expects to receive $144 million from the rescue package.
“We’ve received initial guidance from our federal partners on how we should distribute that money. It’s been pretty general at this point, but the main concept is: Get the money out the door to licensed childcare [centers] so they can stabilize and hopefully re-open.”
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