Caring for children during a pandemic
ARNOLD - Heather Hagler manages a very busy day to day life. On top of being the secretary at Arnold Public Schools, she is also the owner of two daycares in Arnold and one in Callaway all under the names Homegrown Kids.
Like many small businesses, the outbreak of COVID-19 during March affected Hagler’s business tremendously. One of the top issues was the daycare lost enrollment, which was hard for a childcare facility whose numbers were already down.
“We lost a lot of our enrollment due to a lot of parents staying home or they were just nervous about their kids being out with other kids,” Hagler said.
The daycare determined early on that shutting their doors was not an option. Homegrown Kids had too many kids of parents who were essential workers and relied on Hagler to keep her daycares open.
“No matter what, it would have been impossible for me to close my daycare,” Hagler said. “Parents were still having to go to work every day full time...I just felt it wasn’t an option for us, just because I had so many people counting on us to stay open.”
To keep the children who were still coming to daycare safe, Hagler and her staff made sure the daycares were scrubbed top to bottom, something that was already regular, but needed to be done more extensively.
“We already did a lot of cleaning and disinfecting prior to COVID-19, but we had to do even more during the pandemic,” Hagler said. “On nights and weekends, we had to have extra people clean for us. We had to disinfect everything from top to bottom.”
Homegrown Kids also had to navigate around the restrictions on how many children could be in a group. Hagler stated it was a little easier working around this issue due to their smaller number size.
With fewer kids in the daycare due to the pandemic, this also meant fewer hours Hagler needed her staff during the week. She did what she could to help her staff but, like so many other small business owners, she had to cut some of their hours back.
“The most difficult part was not having my staff at their complete full-time hours,” Hagler said.” “I was able to guarantee most of their hours, but that still cut down those working four maybe five days a week down to three.”
Hagler was able to guarantee most of her staffs hours because she applied for the payroll protection program, a loan designed to provide a direct incentive for small businesses to keep their workers on the payroll.
Like thousands of daycares across the country, Homegrown Kids continues to battle through the COVID-19 pandemic. They have gotten through the first few crazy months and hopefully, things can start getting back to the way they should be.