Essential Personnel Child Care

[Anonymous]

For those using the Essential Personnel Child Care in MD, how is it going? How are they handling the social distancing and how are your kids reacting? Ours will be starting next week. Juggling two small kids and working opposite shifts so we can cover childcare is just not sustainable.

[Anonymous]

Ours is at our normal preschool. It’s going fine. They barely have any kids going. She’s the only one from her normal class going. My sense is that out of 250 kids who normally go, there are likely no more than 50-60 there right now across 16 classrooms.

We have to call ahead to tell them we will be dropping her off. We can’t enter the school. We drop her off outside after taking her temperature with our thermometer and showing them the reading. They take her in.

We call ahead when we’re picking her up and she’s outside with a staff member when we get there.

They sanitize the entire school professionally every night.

All staff have to do temp screenings twice a day.

It’s fairly intense, but she seems to be enjoying being at school in some capacity. She’s 3.5.

[Anonymous]

My kid isn't going but I know there's only two kids in his class going with very little overlap because of their parents' schedules/shifts. So at any given time it's usually one teacher with one kid, which seems pretty safe.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Ours is at our normal preschool. It’s going fine. They barely have any kids going. She’s the only one from her normal class going. My sense is that out of 250 kids who normally go, there are likely no more than 50-60 there right now across 16 classrooms.

We have to call ahead to tell them we will be dropping her off. We can’t enter the school. We drop her off outside after taking her temperature with our thermometer and showing them the reading. They take her in.

We call ahead when we’re picking her up and she’s outside with a staff member when we get there.

They sanitize the entire school professionally every night.

All staff have to do temp screenings twice a day.

It’s fairly intense, but she seems to be enjoying being at school in some capacity. She’s 3.5.

Edited to add: I asked today how many kids are currently going, and they said 25. There are only 3 kids in her age group going right now.

[Anonymous]

OP here- We have been using this service for the last month and overall it has been good. Our 3 year old is in a preschool center and she is basically back in school. She complains that the teachers can't hug her and they can't use the playground, but otherwise it has been great. Our Kindergartener is in a school age program and is more bored. They provide more time for the kids to do school work than they need and very little in other programming. But it has allowed us, both essential workers, to have some breathing room.