Coronavirus Impact: Parents Face Childcare Decision, 'This Isn't Sustainable In The Long Run'
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- Parents of young children are facing an extra challenge when it comes to childcare during the pandemic.
Gov. Walz ordered schools to close for the rest of the academic year, but encouraged day cares to stay open to help essential workers. Still, many day cares have closed temporarily even while some parents are going back to work.
Mom of two Mataya Carson found out Tuesday that her in-home day care will not reopen anytime soon. She's been working from home, having a family member help watch her baby and toddler.
"This isn't sustainable in the long run," Carson, from Blaine, said. "The boys need to see kids and they haven't seen other kids in eight weeks."
Carson has considered a day care center but worries about cost and safety.
"Do I stay home even if it's just for the summer until some of this blows over?" Carson said.
Haley Akenson from Shakopee plans to send her child to day care once her center reopens.
"I want him to get back into day care to socialize with kids, but I also think - how are the kids going to react to all the new procedures and precautions," Akenson said.
New Horizon CEO and Minnesota Child Care Association president Chad Dunkley serves on the state's COVID-19 advisory council. New Horizon has kept 70 centers open in Minnesota. Only two centers, which are employer sites, closed at the decision of those employers.
"The first week of the stay at home order we dropped 70 percent of our enrollment," Dunkley said.
Dunkley said that has been a trend at day cares across the country, with parents keeping children home during this time.
New Horizon has made a host of changes to better protect children and staff, including limiting classroom traffic to teachers and kids only, increasing sanitizing, halting family style lunches, and daily health screenings.
Experts have said children can be asymptomatic carriers of the novel coronavirus.
"We can say right now in the six weeks we have done this we haven't had a staff person get it from a child or a child get a diagnosed case of COVID-19," Dunkley said.
Dunkley says families would be notified if a child tests positive for the virus and that child would have to stay home. He says they would reach out to MDH and follow state guidelines. At this time that would mean doing a disinfecting process of the center but not closing down.
Dunkley noted that process could change depending on advice from state health officials.
