By STEPHAN BISAHA
Kansas News Service
WICHITA â Day cares, at a premium in Kansas in non-pandemic times, are essential businesses that can stay open while the state is under a stay-at-home order. Overall, theyâre seeing a drop in the number of kids who show up, but want to be there for health care workers.
âThe nurses. The doctors. Everybody on the frontlines,â Phillipsburg Child Care Center program director Brooke Feik said. âThey need somewhere to take their kiddos.â
Meanwhile, some parents who are at home due to social distancing or climbing unemployment are keeping their kids with them while still paying to keep their day care spots for when the virus lifts. And about 7% of Kansas day cares decided it was too risky to stay open, especially with a combination of hygiene-oblivious toddlers and a shortage of cleaning supplies.
Staying home
The biggest competition to child care facilities during the pandemic: friends, family and neighbors. With plenty of Kansans stuck home, they have the free time to watch each otherâs kids.
âIf you know that your neighbor is also home cause she's a school teacher, you might approach her and say âHey, can you watch your children Monday, Wednesday, Friday? I'll watch your children on Tuesday, Thursday,â" said Leadell Ediger, executive director of Child Care Aware of Kansas, which runs the stateâs child care referral network.
According to a last yearâs child care state report, 77% of Kansas counties had fewer than one child care spot per 10 toddlers, and there were 10% fewer child care programs in the state than two years prior.
But while attendance at child care has dropped, enrollment has not. Day care providers say many parents continue to write the tuition checks, figuring itâs better to pay for unused child care than give up one of the stateâs limited number of spots.
âIf we had several people coming in looking for care next week and you didnât have that spot held for your child, we wouldnât necessarily have a spot for them,â said Jaime Noone, a teacher at Logan ABC Community Day Care Center.
Cleanliness at centers
The practical advice for preventing the spread of the coronavirus is easy â wash your hands, stay six feet away from other people, donât touch your face. But try giving it to a three-year-old.
Kansas provides some social distancing guidelines for child care centers, like no more than 10 kids in a group, not mixing the group and keeping employees with the same group.
Providers say thatâs not too different from what they already have to do to keep their licenses, but they also say keeping kids six feet apart is unrealistic when theyâre just learning what personal space means.
âWe are doing everything we can to space children, but the reality of children is thatâs not a feasible task,â said Emily Barnes, who operates Barnes Childcare in Olathe.
Instead, day care providers take kidsâ temperatures before they come inside. The parents stay outside. One center has the fingerprint scanner that parents have to use when dropping off their kids each day, and itâs cleaned constantly.
Thereâs also a lot of hand-washing â a lot. At one center, kids have to each time they touch their face.
But like a lot of places right now, itâs hard to find cleaning supplies, thermometers and disposable thermometer covers. About 7% of child care providers in the state closed their doors since mid-March, mostly to stop the spread of the virus, according to Child Care Aware of Kansas.
Still working
The parents who still need day care services are often those who canât stay at home.
Kerri Burr usually drops her 3-year-old daughter off at a Wichita day care. Burr has worked at home for a while, writing grants for a nonprofit, but her husband still goes in for his job at a car dealership.
All four of their kids are now at home because schools are closed, and she works at night so her husband can be on parenting duty.
She said it would have been easier to keep sending her daughter to day care, but she didnât want to be a vector.
âItâs hard for me to have everyone home but I donât have to wonder if weâre spreading something around to somebody whose body canât handle it or fight it off,â Burr said.
Stephan Bisaha reports on education and young adult life for KMUW and the Kansas News Service. You can follow him on Twitter @stevebisaha.