For daycares and preschools who don’t mandate masking (because kids too young)…

[Anonymous]

How are things going? I assume teachers are masked and god willing they are vaxxed. But when the kids can’t mask, how are things going right now? Trying to figure out our childcare situation and this is so hard.

[Anonymous]

No change. We haven't been informed of a COVID case among children or staff members at all during the pandemic. The older kids are technically required to wear masks, but in practice the kids take off masks quite a bit indoors. My child is almost never wearing a mask when I pick him up.

My kids are low risk, so I haven't been concerned except for the potential disruption of quarantining. Luckily there hasn't been a closure. But I still fully expect my kids to get COVID before this is over.

[Anonymous]

Our class just came off a two week quarantine. Teacher was positive and vaccinated. From what I heard she was pretty sick.

[Anonymous]

My kid (2 when pandemic started, now 4) has been in two group childcare situations. The first was a preschool for kids age 18 months to 4 years. Because of the big age range, masking was strongly encouraged by not required for kids (adults all masked all the time). The youngest kids never wore masks and honestly couldn't. The kids in my DC's age range (2.5 to 3.5) generally started the day in masks and had varying success in keeping them on. A lot of them were fine until snack and then it was really tough the rest of the day. The older 3s and 4 yo's were really good about masking.

The school was mornings only and outdoors about 70% of the time, and we never had an outbreak. I think the masks might have helped a little, but I think the biggest factors were the shortened day and being outdoors.

The second setting was a PK for 3-5 yos. Masks were required and it was strongly enforced by the teachers. If a child couldn't or wouldn't keep a mask on, they would call parents to come get them. By then my kid was really good at wearing a mask so this was no issue for us and I was glad for the security of knowing mask-wearing would be firmly enforced. This was June-August of this year and while I think the school normally spends a lot of time outside, they were inside a lot simply because of the heat and all the rain. So I'd say it was the inverse of the other school -- indoors about 70% of the time, maybe more (the school's outdoors space was somewhat limited so they usually went to a park nearby, which really curbs the ability to go outside if the weather is too hot or too wet). Again, no outbreaks.

In the second school, I think it was the strictness of the masks and also some pretty strict social distancing and hand washing rules that helped -- again, the teachers were very strong on this. Not mean at all (it was Montessori based) but very firm and kids really learned to follow the rules. And half of her time there was after Delta, so I am encouraged.

So I'd base your choice to the best of your ability on your kid's age and a combination of factors (outdoor time, strictness of mask rules, length of day) to figure out what will work for you. My experience is that it's definitely possible to really mitigate spread in this setting as long as you have a plan and stick with it, and the families at the school are invested in making the plan work. Which, in DC at least, is most places.

[Anonymous]

My 2 yo is in a daycare room split into 2 classrooms with 0-24 month olds on one side and 2 yo on the other. The 2 yo kids are supposed to wear masks, but they don't send the kid home if they can't wear it, and I often see photos of DD with the mask under her nose. This is an all day program with most of the day indoors.

They have not reported to us any Covid cases over the past year when they have been open.

[Anonymous]

Our daycare reopened in June 2020. Teachers are all masked and were required by the owner to get vaxxed as soon as they became available for teachers. Per VA regulation, they aren't requiring anyone under age 5 to mask up. They have had zero cases. My kids have caught a few colds and we got them tested every time and they were all negative. That said, the number of cases in our zip code is very low and vaccine uptake is very high.

[Anonymous]

Teachers are vaxxed and masked, kids are not. We've heard of one case around November, and it didn't require any classroom shutdowns, as the kid wasn't in the classroom during the window the CDC classifies as contagious.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How are things going? I assume teachers are masked and god willing they are vaxxed. But when the kids can’t mask, how are things going right now? Trying to figure out our childcare situation and this is so hard.

Spain studied this because they require masks ages 5 and up. They basically found that masking didn’t decrease spread. The only impact was age. Fewer cases in younger kids. Rose gradually as kids got older but no big drop or jump at age 6 when masking rules changed.