This week, congressional leaders introduced The Child Care is Essential Act. This bill would create a fund to provide much needed relief to the child care sector due to the COVID-19 crisis. With a proposed $50 billion in funding, it would provide grants to child care centers, home based providers, and family child care homes to safely reopen and operate. Providers could use the grants for a variety of needs such as personal protective equipment, mental health supports for children and employees, personnel costs, and more.
I am a licensed child care center based program and am networking with other centers in my area. Our concerns are the same: with the lower mandated ratios and the limited number of children allowed in a classroom, this is not financially feasible for any of us. I opened last week and am losing money is doing so, hoping that the State will lift the restriction on the ratios and the number of children in a classroom, otherwise, my center will have to close again. I had many families asking us to reopen and based on that number made this leap of faith that things will improve. I know of two schools that are hesitant to open, one school that opened and is suffering and one school that will not open until at least September. Even with the PPP loan, this funds will only go so far and then we close our doors. I appreciate efforts made on your part and efforts made on the parts of the people that have put this bill together. I finally feel like someone understands that if we do not get the help we need, we will close and the efforts to slowly reopen the country will come to a halt if child care is not available. I am already turning families away because of the restrictions in capacity and ratios. The financial help along with allowing a larger ratio and more children per room will keep our doors open. I’ve owned and operated my own school for 35 years and understand the needs of the community and our families. Thank you for kind consideration in reading my note.