Daycare closures: Emergency & Snow Day Closing Procedure for Center-Based and Family Child Care Networks

16,000 Shuttered Child Care Programs Push the Sector Closer to Collapse

16,000 Shuttered Child Care Programs Push the Sector Closer to Collapse

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Nearly 16,000 child care programs across 37 U.S. states have permanently closed since the pandemic began, representing a 9 percent decline in the total number of licensed child care providers, according to a new report published this month by Child Care Aware of America.

Though perhaps less severe than some of the worst-case scenarios laid out in early 2020, the loss of thousands of providers reflects an ever-worsening crisis in the field of early care and education, accelerated by—but not originating with—the arrival of COVID-19.

These closures are sure to have major effects on everyone touched by the child care industry, says Mario Cardona, Chief of Policy and Practice at Child Care Aware of America, a national membership association that works to improve child care and the early childhood profession and that conducted the survey which was the basis for the new report.

The decline in child care providers—8,900 of which provided center-based care and 7,000 of which were family child care programs—represents many more thousands of jobs lost along the way. Some of those early childhood educators sought and found other positions in the field, Cardona notes, but others may have decided to look elsewhere, determining that the challenges and stressors in the field had become hard to justify.

“The labor is intense. The work is intense. Health issues continue,” Cardona says, rattling off reasons an early childhood educator might leave for a job in, say, retail or the service industry, where worker compensation has increased during the pandemic. He also notes that the health and risk calculations for early childhood educators and providers remain quite different from that of the rest of the public. Kids from birth to age 4 are still not eligible to receive a COVID-19 vaccine, and mask-wearing only commonly begins after age 2.

Abbie Lieberman, a senior policy analyst on the early and elementary education policy team at New America, a Washington, D. C.-based think tank, pointed out the way closures are affecting children and families as well.

“Families all over the country are experiencing the realities of these closures,” Lieberman said by email. “Child care programs that they may have relied on for years, that they know and trust, have gone out of business and they are scrambling to find a new program that meets their needs.” The situation is more severe and disruptive in communities where child care spots were already limited; more than half of the U.S. population is estimated to live in child care deserts.

“For young children, continuity in care is important,” Lieberman added. “Disruptions in care can make for difficult transitions as children adjust to new providers and situations.”

More than just constraints on availability, the cost of child care has also increased materially, outpacing the rate of inflation on consumer goods. In 2020, the national average price of child care was $10,174 for the year, a 5 percent increase from 2019.

Source: Child Care Aware of America

The rising costs of child care can, in part, be attributed to the pandemic, Cardona explained. It was neither free nor cheap for child care providers to put in place mitigation measures over the last two years. The cleaning supplies, protective gear and other safety efforts came at a price. And sometimes, programs would have to beef up their staff or lower their enrollment to get within more palatable teacher-to-child ratios during the worst outbreaks. Other times, lower enrollment was a natural byproduct of the pandemic, and providers, already operating on tight margins, were forced to offset the losses and additional costs somehow.

Though the average cost of child care has risen significantly, it was unaffordable for many families well before the pandemic. The report’s findings track a trend from crippingly high costs a couple of years ago to cripplingly higher costs today.

Child Care Aware examined the burden of child care costs regionally across the U. S. as well as state-by-state. In California, a married couple with an infant could expect to pay nearly 17 percent of their household income on center-based child care. In Rhode Island, it would cost nearly 12 percent of a married couple’s household income to place their infant in family child care.

Out of four U.S. regions—the Midwest, Northeast, South and West—the report revealed that the average cost of center-based child care for an infant exceeds the average cost of housing in three of them. The only exception is in the West, where housing costs—average monthly rent or mortgage payments—slightly surpass child care costs. In all four regions, annual child care costs exceed the cost of one year of in-state tuition at a public four-year college.

Source: Child Care Aware of America

What this means is that middle-class families are left to work out a nearly impossible financial situation on their own, Cardona says.

“Families are paying so much for care that it impacts family planning; it impacts whether and when they can purchase a home,” he explains. “If you remove that barrier for families, it provides so many options that they don’t currently have.”

The report highlights a number of woeful realities in the child care sector, but none of them are new. The pandemic has worsened the situation considerably and pushed these issues into the public discourse.

“Families cannot afford to pay any more, and child care providers cannot afford to charge any less,” Lieberman writes. “Providers are already struggling to stay afloat, and the workforce is underpaid. Providing a safe, quality environment costs money. The most viable way to lower the burden on parents and ensure that providers stay in business is to invest public funds in child care.”

Both Lieberman and Cardona expressed hope that early childhood provisions of the federal Build Back Better bill, which includes efforts to reduce the cost of child care on families and to improve the early childhood profession, may yet become a reality.

The bill, which has stalled in Congress, would limit child care costs to 7 percent of income for middle-class families (compared to the 10 to 20 percent many families currently pay) and guarantee access to free, universal pre-K for all 3- and 4-year-olds in the U. S., among other forms of assistance for the field.

“It would make a radical difference,” Cardona says emphatically. “It would change the way we support young families. It would address issues related to supply, compensation for educators, affordability for families. … and it would represent a shift in the way this country values early care and education.”

State and local efforts do exist, and they can make a difference. New York is currently considering universal child care at the state level. In Washington, D.C., local officials have signed off on a plan to give one-time payments between $10,000 and $14,000 to child care workers as part of a larger effort to boost their pay.

Still, short of a federal solution, experts say, providers will likely continue to close their programs. Families will continue to be saddled by the inordinate costs of paying for care. Child care workers will continue to need public assistance to get by, if they don’t exit the field altogether.

“Our country should have addressed this market failure a long time ago,” Lieberman said.

Her colleague Laura Bornfreund, director of New America’s early and elementary education policy team, put it more bluntly.

“There has never been a U.S. child care system,” she said by email. “There have been funding streams to help some families meet their child care needs. But even what was previously in place was inadequate. And, now both because of our country’s past failure to put a real system that works for all families in place, years of disinvestment in what was in place, and the current state of child care because of the pandemic, there is a crisis. It is on the brink of collapse.”

NC child care access and COVID-19 closures by county

As the state responds to the COVID-19 pandemic and plans a gradual reopening, early childhood advocates are pointing to the necessity of child care moving forward.

“The bottom line is that if child care programs don’t receive the financial support they need to reopen, it will make it incredibly hard for North Carolina’s families to go back to work when this crisis is over,” writes Michele Rivest, policy director at the NC Early Education Coalition.

About 43% of the state’s child care centers and homes have closed, according to a brief released this month by the NC Justice Center’s Budget and Tax Center titled “NC without child care: Emergency support to state’s early education infrastructure needed now.” And about a third of North Carolina centers responding to a survey by the National Association for the Education of Young Children said they would not be able to reopen after a closure of more than two weeks without government investment.

Even before the pandemic, the state’s child care system did not meet all families’ needs. A Center for American Progress report in December 2018 found that 44% of people in North Carolina were living in a child care desert, defined as an area where there are more than three young children for every licensed child care slot. 

The following map shows the percentage of children living in child care deserts, by county, pulling from the same 2018 data from the Center for American Progress, reported out by the NC Justice Center.

Next, take a look at how the percentage of child care centers/homes that have closed varies by county. The data are from the NC Partnership for Children as of April 14, 2020, reported out by the NC Justice Center.

Centers’ decisions of whether to close, Rivest said in an interview, have considered a variety of factors: the health of workers, children, and their families; the financial viability of operating without revenue from private-paying parents; and the demand of essential workers in their community.

Centers that remain open had to complete a state application to meet certain health and safety guidelines and commit to serving children of essential workers. The state also announced it would continue paying centers subsidy rates and NC Pre-K payments, whether they were open or closed.

“Those that stay open either had a demand or they decided there would be some money coming from the state some time and it was worth it to them financially to try to stay open and get whatever income they could without permanently closing their doors,” Rivest said.

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Finally, look at the following map to consider both child care access and COVID-19 closures by county. Counties are color-coded based on access, then shaded based on the degree of closures. Darker shades imply more closures.

Counties with high access to child care (defined as less than 34% of children living in child care deserts) are green. Counties with medium access (34-66% of children living in child care deserts) are purple. Counties with low access (more than 66% of children living in child care deserts) are red.

Closure levels were broken down for the map similarly. High closures, represented by the darkest shades, are defined as more than 66% of centers/homes closed. Medium closures, represented by the medium shades, are defined as 33-66% of centers closed. Low closures, represented by the lightest shades, are defined as less than 33% of centers/homes closed.

A dark green county, for example, has a low percentage of children living in child care deserts but a high percentage of COVID-19 closures. If centers reopened there, the county’s system would be relatively accessible to children and families.

A light red county has a longer-term accessibility problem but has not seen as many closures.

A dark red county indicates a pre-existing problem of accessibility in the county, which has been deepened by COVID-19 closures.

Rivest said this final situation is where she predicts the most hardship in rebuilding the early education system. Counties with more deserts, Rivest said, often have smaller populations, fewer private-paying parents, and lower subsidy rates for centers. Add to that the uncertainty of how many parents will go back to work – and when – during an economic recession.

“That’s what I think is going to be our greatest challenge, is how do we bring child care back, re-open child care, in an equitable way?” she said. “And I think those higher-desert counties will have the greatest difficulty and need the most financial support.”

The COVID-19 crisis, Rivest said, has illuminated ways the previous system did not provide equal access across the state.

“When we reopen and rebuild, we need to do this in a much more equitable way than our previous system — or our current system — which is really very ad hoc,” she said. “It’s very market-driven, and it’s the North Carolina you look at right now. You have some counties and some people that have low access to resources, whether it’s health care or child care. And somehow we’ve got to level that field out a little bit.”

News

Early Childhood

Coronavirus

Liz Bell

Liz Bell is the early childhood reporter for EducationNC.

90,000 children are transferred to neighborhood kindergartens (VIDEO) – Aif.md

Many kindergartens in the capital were closed for repairs. For this reason, at the request of the parents, the children were transferred to neighboring working institutions. In turn, gardens closed for the summer will resume work in September.

Garden №106 at Botanica usually has 300 children. The facility was recently closed for renovations. The work is nearing completion, so that from next week the children will be able to return to their kindergarten, writes tv8.md.

– Repair was needed: dampness on the walls, broken windows. Children at that time attended kindergarten No. 40. When repair work is carried out there, we will take 45 children from there to our place, – the director of kindergarten No. 106 commented on the situation.

Another kindergarten in Botanika, where renovations have already been completed, temporarily accepts 50 children from neighboring institutions. This practice is used in all regions.

– Parents who cannot leave their children at home for the summer, or under the supervision of grandparents, are invited to temporarily visit neighboring gardens. Thus, all children remain attached, – confirmed the head of the Department of Education, Youth and Sports of the Botanica sector, Ion Musteata.

This year, more than 250 educational institutions in the country were closed for major repairs.

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How kindergartens work in emergency circumstances

Home/K-magazine/How kindergartens work in emergency circumstances

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How kindergartens work in emergency situations

20.01.2022

When parents send their child to kindergarten, they hope that he will go there every day on weekdays if he does not get sick. But there are always failures – water, electricity, heating are turned off in the gardens, accidents happen. We understand how kindergartens work in emergency circumstances and what parents can count on.

What the law says

The working conditions of the kindergarten are prescribed in SanPiN: there must be drinking water in the garden, hot water in the catering department, toilets, laundry, swimming pool, medical unit. If there is no cold water, then this creates an unfavorable epidemiological situation and may affect the health of children and adults.

If there is no cold water in the kindergarten, then children cannot go to it. Also, the head, in agreement with the Department of Education, can generally suspend the work of the organization.

If there is no hot water in the kindergarten, then children can go to it. To do this, it is necessary to ensure the washing of dining and kitchen utensils, compliance with the rules of personal hygiene of children and the sanitary condition of the premises. That is, if employees can wash dishes, toilets and heat water for handwashing.

How do kindergartens work in summer?

It is more difficult with electricity – nothing is said about this in SanPiN. If the work of the kitchen and other departments is not disrupted due to a power outage, then the children can go to the garden or at least stay in it until the end of the working day.

If an accident occurs in a kindergarten, for example, the kitchen is flooded, then its work is suspended. Because the operation of the kitchen can lead to fires and other problems.

If an infectious disease is found in a child from kindergarten, then the group is closed for quarantine. In this case, everything depends on the diagnosis. With chickenpox, quarantine is announced in the group for two weeks: the children go to the garden, but every morning they are checked and watched so that there are no signs of illness.

What should parents do if the garden is closed

As a rule, if the kindergarten is closed for half a day or a day, then the organization can issue certified certificates to parents, which they can provide at work. If the garden cannot work for more than one working day, the manager collects lists of those who definitely need a duty group. Such children are distributed to other kindergartens, taking into account their location.

Playground in kindergarten according to SanPiN and GEF

What to do if the kindergarten is closed

Even if children do not go to the garden, teachers can continue to work if the head has not made a decision to close the garden.