Lehigh Valley: LTE: Reopening child care centers will be difficult for owners
April 28, 2020
As a child care center owner who survived the 2009 budget crisis, I thought the worst years were behind me. When Pennsylvania lawmakers took six months to pass a budget, I was forced to tap into my 401(k). This allowed me to keep my early learning center doors open for the 56 families and 10 staffers who relied on me. Now, more than a decade later, being able to reopen after this health crisis hinges on my 15 employees and the parents of 85 children feeling comfortable returning to work in a post-COVID-19 world.
As a small business owner I’m once again bearing the brunt of a fiscal crisis. New health and safety practices will have to be put into place and small business owners will have to absorb the cost. The federal loans offered don’t take into account the state’s phased regional openings. And having to adhere to the loans’ strict timetable doesn’t factor into the limited staff I might initially need as parents slowly return to their workplaces.
Child care centers are essential infrastructure in communities large and small. Moving forward, we’ll need support from the business community, whose reliance on centers to care for their employees’ children will allow their businesses to once again be productive and profitable. I call on business leaders to help make sure legislators understand that it’s centers like mine that need adequate funding so that we can help support Pennsylvania’s economic revival. We don’t have time to waste.
Anabela Araujo
Nazareth
Read the LTE here.
Lehigh Valley Live: LTE: Gov. Wolf’s ‘pay them more’ comment insensitive to small business owners
April 23, 2020
Being a small business owner right now is so frustrating. With the additional weekly unemployment benefits my child care staff is receiving, they are making more than I could ever pay them. Don’t get me wrong, I am happy that my staff is being taken care of financially. They deserve it.
The frustration comes when Gov. Wolf says, “If you want your staff to come back, just pay them more.” I would love to, governor, but where are we supposed to get that money when subsidy reimbursement rates are not increased for child care centers? Or when private-pay families would have to be charged more, yet many of them are now unemployed, and therefore do not need child care?
To top it off, the Paycheck Protection Plan — a loan designed to provide a direct incentive for small businesses like mine to keep workers on the payroll — has Herculean requirements for the loan to become a grant that doesn’t need to be fully paid back.
Child care centers and small businesses are in a complete Catch 22. We need state and federal policies to help us , not hinder our efforts. Policy makers must realize many businesses, mine included, employ low-income wage earners as well as care for the children of low-income workers. Some of these are the essential workers that people are relying on each day. When businesses reopen, they’ll be relying on child care. Let’s get fiscal strategies in place to make sure this can happen.
Sophia Estrella
Executive director, Elevation Community Center
Allentown
Read the LTE here.
Express-Times: LTE: Many child care centers will need government help to reopen
April 22, 2020
As a former preschool teacher and child care center director, it was my dream to open my own high-quality center. After two years of planning, my dream was realized when I opened the doors of Bright Beginnings Montessori Academy in September 2019.
In March, because of COVID-19, I closed my doors, and like other small business owners, I’m continuing to pay rent, utilities and insurance on an empty building. I’m currently working on achieving a STAR 3 rating, which designates high-quality child care in Pennsylvania. Being able to choose a high-quality site is what families deserve, now more than ever, when they are able to safely return to work.
I want nothing more than to be able to reopen when this crisis has passed, but I’m concerned about how my program will survive. It’s estimated that we could lose up to half the childcare capacity in the state. If I have to close my doors permanently, how will the families that relied on me to care for their children be able to return to work? I urge my legislators to include childcare in the stimulus package. The health of our economy depends on these funds.
Ibis Fernando
Bright Beginnings Montessori Academy
Northampton
Read the LTE here.
Reading Eagle: LTE: Child care centers crucial to reviving our economy
April 18, 2020
I’m the owner of Tiny Thinkers Academy, a child care center in Blandon. Prior to our doors shutting in mid-March because of COVID-19, we cared for 63 children ages 6 weeks to sixth grade and employed 23 staff members. We opened our doors in June 2018. This shutdown has been extremely difficult because we haven’t even turned a profit yet due to startup loans.
Yet as a small-business owner, I am still responsible for my center’s financial obligations of rent and utility payments in order to maintain it for when we do reopen. The pandemic has exposed the fragility of the child care system as a whole, which operates on the slimmest of margins.
Though we did file a waiver to remain open, only two children of essential workers needed care, meaning it wasn’t financially possible for us to open our doors.
The parents who rely on my center, are not considered essential workers and have the ability to work from home are doing so with crying infants and toddlers in need of attention. Once they are permitted to return to their workplaces, they will need centers like mine to return to their jobs. Once we are past this health crisis and businesses reopen, child care will be needed more than ever in order to help restore our workforce and economy.
Emily Hartman
Maidencreek Township
See the letter to the editor here.
Observer-Reporter: LTE: Pa’s child care providers must be saved
April 6, 2020
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, many groups cautioned about the lack of affordable, high-quality child care for Pennsylvania’s working families and the impact on our economy. When families can’t find child care or afford it, that serves as a barrier to employment. Groups like the Pennsylvania Early Learning Investment Commission and ReadyNation estimated that the economic impact of insufficient infant / toddler child-care cost our commonwealth $2.5 billion annually. In short, the economy depends on working families and working families depend on child care.
Today, that child-care system is largely shut down like most sectors of our economy, causing real problems for essential workers across the state. This economic shutdown is also exposing the fragility of the child-care system. According to a new survey, nearly one-third of child-care providers indicated that they would go out of business if this economic shutdown lasts for more than a month. This begs an important question, “How will Pennsylvania families go back to work when businesses reopen if child-care providers do not?”
As leaders consider immediate economic stimulus options for the commonwealth, efforts to stabilize child-care providers must be a priority. Stimulus funding must be prioritized to strategically position our commonwealth for a speedy and robust economic recovery. As such, Pennsylvania’s child-care system must be saved.
State representative, 48th District
The Fred Rogers Co.
Read the LTE here.
Morning Call: Lehigh Valley child care centers could collapse under coronavirus. Will federal aid rescue the industry?
April 4, 2020 By: Anthony Salamone
Jennifer Butz-Smith marked her business’ 15th anniversary last month quietly.
“It came on March 18,” Smith, the owner of Horizon of Learning day care in Emmaus, said recently, “So it came with all the other stuff. We didn’t even get a chance to celebrate.”
“It’s 15 years of my heart and soul, of keeping this going,” she said. “Then it comes down to, ‘Oh my goodness, all this is happening.’”
Smith is like hundreds of child care providers and workers in the region. Their future is uncertain as they hang on in fear that their centers — like so many smaller businesses — might be unable to manage through the health crisis.
The state last week approved waivers that allowed some 700 child care facilities to operate to serve children of essential workers. Smith’s facility is among some 70 in and around the Lehigh Valley, according to the Department of Human Services.
For her center, it meant reopening for 10 children among her working families who needed child care; she said she has not taken on new clients.
But like many operators, she’s had to curtail operations and cut staff; Smith said she laid off eight of her nine employees, leaving one teacher and herself for the children’s facility that normally handles 60 children from early childhood to fifth grade.
Has she been experiencing sleepless nights, or nightmares? No, the upbeat Smith said, but, “It’s always on my mind. You are responsible, not only for people’s children, but the livelihoods of my staff. They depend on me that they can pay their bills. That’s the added stressor.”
Lehigh Valley Children’s Centers closed for a week for cleaning and then reopened three of its 30 sites, two in Lehigh County and one in Northampton County, for children whose parents work in essential businesses.
Remington White, a support staffer at the center, said he decided to come back to work, where he’d receive extra pay.
“Our essential employees, they need to do their jobs to keep us up and running as a country, as a community,” he said. “It’s my way of contributing through these hard times.”
White said there are fewer children per staff member, and they’ve been doing activities that call for more sitting down than running around to keep children apart in this era of social distancing.
Read the full article here.
