Fears shut day cares, parents still work
Coronavirus causing problems for child care in Central Florida
The number of open child-care centers in Central Florida has dwindled in the midst of the coronavirus crisis, and those still operating are struggling with declining enrollments, scarce supplies and deciding what is best for community health.
But the open centers are crucial to parents who still must report to work — from hospital employees to grocery store clerks — so early childhood advocates and parents say they are providing an essential service, even as the new virus makes their jobs more difficult.
“If we didn’t have day care, I don’t know what we’d do,” said Ali Thomas, a physicians assistant, as she picked up her 11-month-old
daughter from the Azalea Park Learning Center in Orange County on Wednesday afternoon.
She sees 30 patients a day at the clinic where she’s employed, and her husband is also in the medical field, so both must continue on-site work.
As schools, theme parks and businesses shut down, and county governments urge residents to stay home, she was terrified the center would close, too. She also worried about her daughter Riley getting infected with COVID-19, wondering, “Is she going to be safe here?”
The center, off Semoran Boulevard, is always clean, she said, and it has implemented additional disinfecting routines and new pickup and drop-off procedures, preventing parents, for example, from walking into classrooms. All that has helped reassure her.
“We’re trying to be open through all of this,” said owner Alison Petrie.
But like other centers, Azalea Park has seen its enrollment plummet, as some parents keep their children home because they are working there now, they’ve lost their jobs or they’ve found a relative to care for them, fearing a larger group setting,
The center has 135 infants and children enrolled, Petrie said, but just 50 attended Wednesday.
Fewer children on site has made it easier to keep classes small — though nothing will convince toddlers and preschoolers to embrace “social distancing” — but it also means a serious financial drain.
At least 160 child-care centers in Lake, Orange and Seminole counties that take part in Florida’s subsidized child-care or pre-kindergarten programs have shut down in the past few weeks, according to the early learning coalitions in those counties, which oversee those programs locally.
That represents about 20 percent of the state-supported child-care centers in those three counties. Combined, they enrolled several thousand children.
Head Start in Osceola and Seminole and Early Head Start in Orange, Osceola and Seminole also closed March 17, with plans to reopen April 15, if possible, said Patricia Frank, president and CEO of the nonprofit Community Coordinated Care for Children, which oversees the federally funded child-care programs.
“We’re having the same issue that other child-care providers are having,” she said.
Those Head Start programs had enrolled more than 1,000 toddler and preschoolers.
Head Start in Orange, with more than 1,500 children enrolled, also closed, as it follows the same schedule as Orange public schools.
The child-care centers that are open worry how long they can keep welcoming children.
“It’s a very trying time for them,” said Jennifer Grant, chief executive officer of the Seminole County Early Learning Coalition.
Many have found supplies, from bleach to milk to toilet paper, are harder to come by.
Some centers are also wrestling with whether staying open is the right thing to do, even as they shrink class sizes and change procedures to meet new health guidelines.
Audrey Bruner, chief executive officer of Kids City USA, recently recommended her 34 franchises in Central Florida close until at least April 15, just as the public schools have. Twenty nine of those child-care centers did.
Bruner said she feels bad for the 1,500 children who lost care, the parents who are searching for other arrangements, and the childcare workers who are now unemployed. But in the end, she was more worried about preventing the spread of COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus.
“I just felt like we needed to be responsible to the community,” she said. “We have to put our health number one.”
Though Gov. Ron DeSantis ordered public schools closed at least until April 15 and urged other employers to “reduce the density of the workforce,” he did not shutter child-care centers.
“I think that will cause huge issues throughout the state,” DeSantis said at a press conference last week.
The state’s Office of Early Learning has tried to ease some of the financial problems by announcing it will pay centers based on their enrollments prior to the crisis, not actual attendance now.
That’s a huge help to Petrie’s center, where most of her parents rely on one or both of the state programs to cover most of their children’s child-care fees. Without that, “We probably would have to close up, that’s for sure,” she said.
But child-care centers that rely more heavily on parents who pay the costs themselves face a sharp loss of income when their enrollment declines, making it harder for them to remain open.
Child-care workers typically earn low wages and have few benefits, so if they are out of work they will be among those needing assistance during this economic tumult, advocates say.
“They’re one crisis away from that downward spiral,” Grant said.
In Florida and across the nation, advocates also worry that some of these small businesses will never reopen.
A national survey done earlier this month by the National Association for the Education of Young Children found that 30% of child-care centers could not survive a closure of more than two weeks, and 17% could not survive any sort of shutdown.
“The reality is that child care is an essential service to keep this economy moving,” said Karen Willis, chief executive officer of the Early Learning Coalition of Orange County. It is “absolutely critical to keep families employed.”
That seems especially true now at Children’s Academy at Loch Haven, where 75% of the children have parents who work at Advent Health’s Orlando hospital or its affiliated medical offices.
“Of course, a lot of them need to be there,” said Linda Rumsey, the center’s director.
But she has also seen enrollment drop sharply. So far, she has kept on all her staff, with those who aren’t with children spending time disinfecting. “We’ve definitely been cleaning all the time.”
Lesha Buchbinder, executive director of the Early Learning Coalition of Lake County, said she is urging centers in Lake to try to stay open.
Some families need them now in these “very challenging times” and more will when more businesses reopen.
“They’re an unsung hero right now,” she said. Kate Santich of the Sentinel staff contributed to this story.