By TR Robertson
One of the forgotten, but crucial, parts of the re-opening of businesses and daily life amid the COVID-19 pandemic is the re-establishment of child care centers to help and assist workers as they return to work. Several of the local centers have remained open assisting essential workers, working with a reduced staff and a reduction of the number of children allowed. Calls to the San Diego Executive Director of the YMCA and the Vista Educational Enrichment Systems were not returned.
Julie Lowen, President and CEO of the Children’s Paradise Center in Vista, said they had initially planned to close but realized, “our families would be in dire-straits as many of them did not have the food nor supplies they needed to successfully shelter-in-place”. Matt Koumaras, President and CEO of the Boys & Girls Club of Vista said they have been serving kids of essential workers, only grades K-8 per Governor Newsoms’ April mandate. He said they are hoping to expand after the 25th to eventually serve all kids when the County of San Diego gives their okay.
Facility Restrictions
Both facilities have reduced the number of children assigned to workers. Children’s Paradise works with a maximum group size of 10 children. Two teachers are assigned to each group at all times to keep the stability of the group size. Lowen said they did let several individuals go who had concerns about their safety and were expressing negative attitudes about continuing to work during the crisis. These staff members were advised to take leave, but still the CPI team are currently working with a staff of 170. She said restricting the group sizes has reduced their capacity to about 40% of their normal capacity. Their five facilities across North San Diego County are open Monday thru Friday 6 am to 6 pm. Koumaras said they did have to let some staff go as a result of the decline in attendance. Currently they have 6 program staff and 18 children and they are hopefully expanding to 36 essential care worker children. They hope to include all kids for the summer but are limited to 80 kids due to distancing. There will be no field trips or transportation this summer. The Boys and Girls Club is open Monday thru Friday 7 am until 6:30 pm.
Safety Measures
Children’s Paradise has implemented a stringent protocol for ensuring the safety of staff and children. Lowen said they are following the entire Caring series of protocols and procedures to align with WHO, CDC, Licensing, Department of Education, Cal-OSHA, County Health Department, First 5, Pest Control regulating agencies and YMCA-CRS direction as these are sent through a variety of email communications weekly. They implement a stringent morning health check for all families and have posted a quantity of signage reminders throughout the facility with a number of check lists that have to be followed daily, including everything from laundry procedures, hand washing guidelines, Infant toddler and Preschool cleaning supplies check list, bathroom cleaning procedures, common area cleaning, and classroom cleaning and operations check lists and more. The Boys and Girls Club also has strict guidelines for their site which was approved by the State of California licensing services to run an emergency program for essential care workers. They do temperature checks, an initial questionnaire, the staff wears masks, have routine hand washing for everyone and have an extensive cleaning program after use. The Boys and Girls Club also employs a professional janitorial company for deep cleaning at night after the children have gone home.
Funding
One of the significant problems both of these facilities are having is funding. Children’s Paradise did get a PPP loan. Their FTE is for 153 employees but they are currently employing 170. Lowen said the application was easy and they were quickly funded. She said the California Department of Education has retained all funding levels prior to COVID, as has the Alternative Payment programs, Head Start and Early-Head Start Grantees. One large source of income has been lost as they have lost all of their parent-paid tuition and in order to maintain the CDE Management that is required they have endured increase expenses for cleaning and other safety supplies and the resources needed to create a robust home-based education program. Koumaras said the Boys and Girls Club had a slightly harder experience communicating with the SBA regarding the PPP loan. He said they did get the PPP loan in late April, but the loan came after they had already released some employees. His hope is to get some of these people back on staff once things begin to settle down. They did receive a grant from the Rest Haven Foundation to provide meals to Club member families as well as for meals and snacks for day camps.
Problems
Lowen said that their facility was initially included in a County Childcare Taskforce via a conference call. The Childcare Taskforce was made up of a number of large agencies (like YMCA, First 5, SDCOE, Feeding San Diego and more), representatives from Childcare Agencies that closed and 2 childcare providers that remained open with State Preschool funding contracts. She said all funding-ask decisions were made by the Large Agencies on this Taskforce and according to Lowen the funding decisions appeared to benefit the financial needs of the larger agencies rather than address the real crisis in all childcare centers. Lowen also pointed out the seemingly irresponsible funding of $61 million, to be used to provide childcare to the children of over-income essential workers, by a number of agencies has led to cuts in reimbursement rates of 10% across the board which will be devastating to businesses like Children’s Paradise, possibly leading to closures or severe reductions. Lowen said the voices of childcare providers are still not included in the San Diego Childcare Disaster Council as 80% of all childcare in California is provided by private providers. To date, only one new provider is included on this newly revived council while many of the Tier 5 Quality Counts California providers including Children’s Paradise Inc. have been excluded. She feels childcare providers have lost their voice when it comes to dealing with the childcare issues amid this COVID pandemic as large agencies scramble to soak-up funding which instead should reach childcare providers in the places these scarce resources are truly needed. Similarly, Matt Koumaras says it will be very difficult to run their programs with a 9:1 staff ratio in the future and they are no longer a drop-in center due to the limitations because of the pandemic.
Koumaras said, “The biggest challenge is getting city, county, state and federal governments communicating together as they also tend to have a lot of differing opinions on guidelines. We will be serving less kids but the costs to serve them will triple during the upcoming school year.”
Articles and coverage about concerns in the child care service are beginning to appear. Recent coverage in the Boston Globe, USA Today and on Yahoo has alluded to the changes these centers will be going through and the rising cost to run these centers, not to mention rising costs to parents who send their children to centers that have some sort of fee involved. Funding is always at the center of many issues and it is a source of concern for Child Care right now.
