Ice sends parents scrambling for child care
With schools and day care centers closed, taking kids to work is only option for some
Miles Christoff carefully folded the piece of paper in front of him as he sat in an empty restaurant. He’s only 6 years old, but he knows the drill: On storm and “snow days,” Miles and his older brother Seamus, 9, accompany their mother to work.
“We all assume that by the time they’re 16, they’ll be able to run the place,” said Miles’ mother, Jordann Foreman. Foreman is the special events manager at Underbelly restaurant. And on Tuesday afternoon, as she went through her laundry list of to-dos, her kids passed the time at The Hay Merchant craft food and beer bar next door.
More than 1.1 million students throughout the greater Houston area were out of school on Tuesday, when a wintry mix made many of the city’s roads too hazardous to try. As a result, families throughout the region scrambled to find child care solutions for a rare snow day.
“This isn’t the first time they’ve spent the day at Hay Merchant,” Foreman said of her two sons. “In the mornings, it’s their own private clubhouse. And at 3 o’clock, when the restaurant opens, it’s
time to sit quietly and behave.”
When Hurricane Harvey slammed into the city last summer, delaying the opening of Houston’s public schools, Miles and Seamus spent much of their time at the restaurants. They’d pack a backpack with their iPads, books and armfuls of Legos, then set up a pillow near an electrical outlet and pass the time reading and playing.
Still, snow days aren’t all Legos and telecommuting. For low-income families, students who miss a day of school are often losing their access to a free lunch and could go hungry for the day. In addition, parents who work part time are far less likely to have flexibility in their schedule than those who work full time. In 2017, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that 84 percent of full-time workers have paid sick time, compared with 36 percent of parttimers.
“I’m super fortunate,” Foreman said, between calls with a London-based client who had booked a 60-person event in a private dining room for Tuesday evening. It took several hours to explain to her client that this kind of severe weather in Houston, which is not accustomed to sleet and ice, meant rescheduling the event was likely the best call. Finally, the dinner was moved to a new date.
As a single mom, Foreman often encounters hiccups in her workday that require her sons to tag along for an hour or longer. And her bosses are accommodating. While most of Houston knows Chris Shepherd as a James Beard award-winning chef, her kids see him as the guy who always offers up a high-five when they lug a backpack into one of his restaurants.
“They know everyone here on a first-name basis,” said Foreman. “And if you ask one of my kids who Chris Shepherd is, they say, ‘He’s my high-five instructor.’”
All across Houston, families cobbled together plans to take care of children as schools and many day cares shuttered in response to the weather.
For the Gilmores of Bellaire, that meant taking their kids to work.
Three of their children — ages 10, 7 and 4 and equipped with books, video games and iPhones — went to work with their father, Larry Gilmore, a master electrician who had to service a few generators.
“Then one came to work with me,” said Heather Gilmore, who works at Randalls. “He is in the back watching TV and playing video games,” she said of her 11-year-old.
The last time Houston roads were threatened by ice was nearly seven years ago — in February 2011. Back then, the share of workers with smartphones and tablets was much lower, limiting their ability to work from home. According to a 2017 study by Gallup, the share of people who telecommute, at least occasionally, rose from 39 percent in 2012 to 43 percent in 2017. And on Tuesday, many Houstonians were doing the best they could by phone and computer.
At NASA’s Johnson Space Center, the on-site child care facility that hosts 150 kids on any given day, the call to close went out at 10:30 a.m. That’s the same time NASA decided to close the entire center — with the exception of the Mission Control group, who are always on the clock to help keep astronauts safe.
Even before that hour, the parking lot was sparse, said NASA spokesman Kelly Humphries. Typically, about 13,000 employees work on-site, or in the buildings around the space center as government contractors. Most stayed home.
“In general, each employee is an individual and has different situations,” said Humphries. “But the center policy is to try to take advantage of the capability of working from anywhere as much as possible.”
As a result, many employees telecommuted for the day. And NASA wasn’t alone in this.
Jim Allard, associate chief nursing officer at The Woman’s Hospital of Texas, is on Team A, a crew of 500 people who went to work Tuesday knowing they’d be there 48 to 72 hours. When Allard goes to work during emergencies like Harvey or the current ice storm, he knows it’s part of the job.
“Like any other nurse, we have a plan in place at home. My husband is at home and takes over the house and responsibilities there when I need to be at work,” Allard said. “I came in knowing I might be here for a couple of days, depending on how this weather goes.”
When his shift is over, he and others on the day shift will find places in the hospital to sleep —including empty patient rooms. The hospital has 75 air mattresses on hand for nights like this.
When Andee Higgins Parker, a home builder, saw the weather forecast on TV news Monday night, she texted the four women who work for her, telling them to stay home today. She operates her Casa Bella Design Group from her home in The Woodlands, and knew that her four office workers would have day care issues.
Among them, they have seven children, from toddlers to high schoolers. When they’ve had similar weather events in the past, she had them come to work, putting the high school-aged kids to work looking after the younger ones.
“I said, ‘Let’s plan on nobody coming in. We’ve been working over the phone. … I’m trying to hire someone and had to cancel three interviews. Everybody understands,” she said. “It’s looking like tomorrow is more of the same.”
Another day without school might just make Holly Goines of La Porte snap. She has three boys — ages 1, 4 and 6 — and between vacations, holidays and a house full of kids with the flu last week, she can count the days she’s worked since before Christmas on one hand.
“I can’t wait to get back to the office and talk to people,” she said Tuesday afternoon as her older two children ran around her house with Nerf guns, and the baby fussed. “Someone besides a toddler. I need some adult interaction back in my life.”