Reply to Shutdown and childcare

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Can you spend this extra time with your child and just pay to keep slot open? At a reduced rate. Then everyone wins. [/quote]

You think daycares are offering reduced rates when they also have bills and payrolls? Some may but it’s not a given.[/quote]

Counterpoint; if the OP went this route, [b]you could justify it to the daycare that they're able to change their ratios (since they have one less child) [/b]while still bringing in tuition. Admitedly, it's a tough sell though. [/quote]

Former Program director here:  Unless we had MANY children not attend, we can't change the ratios if only a few children do this.

For ex:  PreK Classroom has group size of 20, teacher:child ratio 1:10.  Until TEN children in this room don't come, we can't change a single ratio with 12, 14, 15, 19 children.

Infant classroom Group size 8, teacher:child ratio is 1:4.  So here, until 4 children don't come and the classroom is at 4, we can't decrease a teacher.

BUT in DC, the rule is that there must be TWO staff members in a classroom at all times.  Period. End stop. (not true in MD and VA) So even if there is ONE child there need to be two staff members .... so in the example above, we'd need TWO baby rooms to lose 8 children, to combine the last 4 from each room and keep 2 teachers, lay off 2 others.

That's not tenable, as we won't be able to rehire those teachers - and please know that finding GREAT, qualified, ECE teachers is NOT EASY - so laying them off would mean we might not get them back and it would take a while before we could reopen the room because you can't open until you rehire 2 teachers.

It's a horrible situation all around.  Truly.  If we delay collecting tuition from the fed parents, that's great, IF a program has enough $ to pay rent, staff salaries, health care, heat, electricity, phone, and paper goods.  BUT in this case, we all are very worried that the feds won't be getting back pay - or at least, not all of them. So then, we'd have provided free childcare for 1 or 2 months (it CANNOT/WILL NOT go longer than that, RIGHT????) while collecting tuition from the other parents who aren't feds, or who have only 1 fed and one non-fed parent.

IF we don't offer this, we lose the families, which we hate, but we have to make payroll, rent, and all other bills.  In a program with a long waiting list, this means we'd have to fill it.

I used to hate all these decisions!  During the pandemic, we did ask for half pay from parents so we could cover payroll and we asked landlords to wait until we reopened for our rent.  But in this case, we need to be open for non-fed families[/quote]

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