Our daycare center plans to expand service

[Anonymous]

Our daycare center is planning to expand services by offering Full time Private K plus Full time care/supervision to elementary school age kids on distance learning/hybrid days, range from age 5 to 10 years old. Are other daycare center doing the same? If you have kids currently enrolled & attending in infant/toddler/pre-k, what do you think?

I have a toddler & a pre-k kid at our daycare center, and I hope that those elementary school aged kids practice social distance enough not to bring COVID into daycare center in the fall because I believe they would share same facilities as other smaller kids. I know many elementary school aged kids in my neighborhood sign up for different summer camps, go to pool, play altogether, and such. Am I worrying too much?

[Anonymous]

The bigger kindercare care type places separate the school aged kids entirely. There are no activities that combine the after care kids with the daycare kids, sometimes they’re in different buildings or sections of the building. They would never be near each other. I know people who have kids in different grades at those programs and their kids never see each other. The bigger ones sometimes even have two different playgrounds.

[Anonymous]

I don’t know if parents of younger kids are better at social distancing than parents of school age kids, but I think you need to do what makes you comfortable.
Yes most kids whose parents aren’t paranoid have some form of social interaction with peers by now because unlike toddlers and infants, they need it. It may be one friend or a camp, you just don’t know.

[Anonymous]

If you are worried, keep your kids home. Some of your concerns for older kids make no sense when families can have younger kids doing the same thing with play dates, traveling, etc. Its very necessary for k-5th graders to also have child care. Personally I wouldn't send my kids at all except if I had no other choice. To me, what you are doing is very risky.