Bloomington-Normal child care providers are stepping up to help essential workers who still have to report to their jobs despite the coronavirus.
The YWCA Young Wonders program is one of about 11 approved emergency child care options in McLean County. There are between 30 and 60 kids at Young Wonders every day, as their parents or guardians go to work at local hospitals, nursing homes, and restaurants still open for delivery or carryout, among other jobs.
Melissa Breeden, senior director of YWCA Young Wonders, praised her staff—a few working on-site, others from home—for powering through during “a very scary time.”
“I’m not gonna lie. It’s incredibly difficult stresswise,” Breeden told WGLT. “But they’ve just been very positive.”
Gov. JB Pritzker’s stay-at-home order March 21 closed licensed child care centers and all childcare homes serving more than six children. Some centers and homes, such as YWCA’s Young Wonders, have been approved to reopen as emergency providers serving only essential workers’ families.
At Young Wonders, Breeden said they’ve had to make several adjustments to keep everyone safe. Dropoffs and pickups—once one of the most interactive, lively parts of the day—is done in a closed-off lobby, with the same staff member taking each child’s temperature when they come in. Class sizes are smaller too; preschool rooms that once had up to 20 children now only have up to eight—usually less.
“Kids are just not getting as much social interaction with their peers,” Breeden said. “We’re looking forward when things can get back to normal.”
Breeden said it’s been gratifying to hear child care publicly discussed as an essential part of life. Early childhood education is a notoriously underappreciated, underpaid field.
“I gotta say, just having Gov. Pritzker mention child care workers briefly at his address last week, it made me feel so great that like, wow, we’re actually being mentioned,” she said. “I really hope that momentum continues. Because we need to be recognized just as much as public schools. We’re the ones catching the developmental red flags which helps once kids get to the school system.”
The coronavirus is being felt across McLean County’s network of child care providers.
Both Katie’s Kids Learning Center locations in Bloomington-Normal are now closed. Owner Katie Stelle-Mardis said she is considering getting an emergency license from the state to partially reopen.
She recently spoke to one of her families, in which both parents are considered essential workers. Their 1-year-old daughter has been with Katie’s Kids since she was 8 weeks old.
“She’s been with us for the past year, and now you might have to take her out of her comfortable environment and put her in a new environment, with people she doesn’t know, and that’s already such a big decision for parents,” Stelle-Mardis said. “There’s a reason that they choose where they choose, and that’s why we felt it was important to at least seek out what it would take to get an emergency child care license.”
Stelle-Mardis has around 100 employees, and they’re still getting paid. They’re working from home, occasionally connecting online with their kids and otherwise preparing lessons for when things return to normal, Stelle-Mardis said.
“They just can’t wait to get back to work,” she said.
Some parents are still paying partial tuition for those limited interactions, but Stelle-Mardis said her small business will need additional help to keep paying employees. She’s considering the Paycheck Protection Program and Economic Injury Disaster Advance Loan programs, both offered by the U.S. Small Business Administration.
The state has already offered stipends (up to $3,000 for larger child care centers) to offset some of the additional costs providers may incur during the emergency. It’s also made it easier for providers to serve low-income families enrolled in the state’s Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP).
“We don’t have enough extra money in the pot to be able to cover months of payroll and expenditures. It’s impossible in our field,” Stelle-Mardis said. “It’s critical that the government stepped up and shared in the burden of this as well, so that it doesn’t absolutely close doors for folks.”
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