Childcare providers on the North Shore are working to come up with their own ways to cope with the new regulations and guidelines set by the state once it’s permissible to resume the service.
The coronavirus pandemic has placed the future of childcare “in jeopardy,” said Birgitta Damon, CEO of Leading Through Empowering Opportunities (LEO) Inc, a Lynn-based organization that runs an early childhood education program.
Damon said LEO, which serves children from 6 weeks to 5 years old, plans to reopen its Head Start program June 29. But social distancing restrictions and classroom limits imposed by the state will mean their 352 available preschool slots will have to be cut in half.
Coupled with that, Damon said, because of Department of Early Education and Care (EEC) guidance limits classroom sizes to 10 students, LEO will have to hire additional teachers to manage fewer children.
Since federal funding is typically doled out to childcare providers on a per-student basis, Damon said it’s unclear how funding will be impacted going forward. About 75 percent of LEO’s preschool and childcare funding comes from the federal government, she said.
“Bringing back half of our children will be difficult,” said Damon. “We’re working with the Department of Early Education and Care to figure out how to fund our slots. We can’t pay our teachers half of their paycheck. Our hope is that by September, we would be able to bring more children back.”
Damon anticipates that many child care programs in Massachusetts are not going to be able to reopen because of those types of considerations. LEO is already reimbursed at 20 to 30 percent lower than the market rate, and other subsidized child care providers have also been taking a similar loss, she said.
“Right now, the childcare industry is in jeopardy,” said Damon. “The issue has always been child care is expensive and there’s not enough slots. Our industry was already in a predicament and now this makes it more difficult.”
Another consideration is how to provide a nurturing and collaborative environment for children when contact and group play is discouraged, she said.
“That requires us to be creative and come up with activities that would keep children from being in groups,” said Damon. “Obviously that’s difficult. A lot of what we do is prepare kids for social and emotional development, (such as) teaching them to share and work together. Now we’re keeping them apart.”
YMCA of MetroNorth CEO Kathleen Walsh said the plan is to have a staggered opening “to work the kinks out.”
The Torigian Family YMCA, which services Lynnfield and Peabody, will open its doors June 29, with the Melrose, Saugus and Lynn facilities to follow.
“We know we won’t be perfect when we open, but we feel that by opening one at a time, the next one to open will have fewer issues,” said Walsh. “We have already been practicing social distancing protocols with our emergency care going on 11 weeks, so while the regulations are changing every day, we feel we have many protocols in place already.”
For example, some of the regulations were relaxed this week, which includes doing away with temperature scans requirements for children prior to entering facilities. The state also eliminated the face-mask mandate. Instead, face masks will be “encouraged.”
“Enrollment will be interesting, and it’s going to be a fluid process as people wait to see how it goes,” she said. “Our big concern is we want to accommodate everybody who was in our daycare March 16, but we won’t know if that’s possible as I expect we will be taking kids on a rolling enrollment basis.”
Saugus YMCA Branch Director Jen Conway said the shutdown has made for a difficult three months.
“We have not had kids in the building since March 18,” she said. “On the business side of it, it was just devastating. I had to furlough so many staff and the entire thing was pretty heartbreaking. We’re excited to be having some staff back now, and excited to be building the rooms back up, but every time we talk to the teachers, they just miss their kids.”
Conway said that even once the facility is able to open, nothing will look like it did before the coronavirus pandemic. Rooms have been arranged to allow for proper social distancing measures, and everything will be significantly spaced out, including the children’s personal cubbies.
Adding to the stress of the situation, Saugus’ YMCA child care program is meant for children ages 2.9 to five years old, which Conway said makes any changes all the more disruptive for students that young.
“It’s going to be a different world where kids are not sitting on your lap anymore,” Conway said. “It’s going to be really difficult for facial expressions with masks on, so we’ve prepared with some face shields, as well as posters teachers can hold up to remind the kids that the face behind the mask is the teacher they’ve always known and loved.”
She added: “The school day is definitely going to look very different, but we just think it’s so important to get the kids back in here and to have some bit of routine.”
Alicia Rivera, of Lynn, is looking forward to re-establishing that sense of routine for her 4-year-old twin boys, Angel and Enrique, when she sends them back to LEO’s Head Start program later this month.
“I think we all have some concerns but I also think it will be good for their socialization to try to get back to normal,” said Rivera. “I think being cooped up in the house this long isn’t too good for their development but I also feel like the school will be doing as much as possible to take care of the kids.”
Rivera said things have been a little bit more hectic with having her children at home all the time, and feels that school provides them with more structure.
“They have a lot more energy than I realized,” she said. “Trying to keep them busy is not as easy as I thought.”
Lynnfield resident Gary Romano and his wife, Karen O’Brien, have two children, Ben, age 9, and Finnian, age 5. Both have been working from home during the pandemic. Finnian is scheduled to return to daycare at the Odyssey School in Wakefield in a week, but Romano said the decision to enroll him for the summer wasn’t easy.
“We are worried about safety, so it was not an easy decision,” Romano said. “I don’t know if we are ready for him to be with other kids. I explained to my 9-year-old that kids don’t appear to be directly affected, but their ability to carry it home has not been scientifically established, so yes, we do have worries about Finn bringing it home and we also worry about the teachers.”
Kate Sloss, director of Just Like Home Daycare in Marblehead, said she hopes to reopen her small family daycare by June 29.
“It’s going to be a pain, but it’s a doable pain,” Sloss said.
In the meantime, Sloss is assessing how she will be able to keep children socially distant and deal with parents’ concerns. She admits no plans are set in stone, and she’s had to tell parents, “You need a backup plan,” in case things don’t work out.
“I specialize with infants through three (years old), and kids that age social distance about as well as newborn puppies,” she said.
Even though Sloss is receiving unemployment benefits right now, she said she is “down at least 50 percent” financially because of the daycare having been closed.
Debra Carter, owner of Debbie’s Day Care in Peabody, has been in the day care business for 30 years. She plans to reopen her facility, which is licensed for six children, on June 29.
“There’s a lot to this as we have to comply with what’s set out in the regulations and there are 32 pages to that,” she said. “But we can’t open businesses without day care. Our parents need to bear with us and trust that we are doing what we have to do even if they don’t agree with it.”
Carter said she feels fortunate that the parents of her kids are not at all anxious about reopening. She advises parents who feel they cannot comply with the mandates of the EEC (Department of Early Education and Care) to look into hiring a nanny as an alternative.
“So much of this is common sense, but how do you keep children six feet apart when they are playing?” she said. “Of course there will be times when a kid has to take the mask off and times when social distancing is impossible, like when they are crying, so we’ll do the best we can under the circumstances.”
Karen Tempesta, owner and operator of Rainbow Family Daycare in Swampscott, said she has chosen not to reopen until September, with the state guidelines being too restrictive to run her small daycare of 10 children.
“There are 32 pages of guidelines,” she said. “I read it, I’ve done this for 39 years, and it just didn’t feel right to me.”
Tempesta said she hopes state guidelines will have loosened by fall, and, luckily, she’s been in contact with the parents, who have mostly said they can last without daycare until September because they are working from home. At some point, however, daycares will have to reopen in full, Tempesta said.
A key element in successful daycares, she said, is the ability to teach children socialization, which has been stripped away by the state’s reopening guidelines.
“They want children to work independently, and I get it,” said Tempesta. “But the idea is to teach socialization, learning to be with people, deal with conflict, share toys, (and) play outside. These set the foundation for the rest of your life.”
Item reporters Gayla Cawley, Elyse Carmosino, David McLellan and Anne Marie Tobin contributed to this report.
