HARTFORD, Conn. — Some early learning centers across the state are welcoming students back while other centers face new challenges in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
"Now we have to keep everyone kind of in their own little pods, so a preschool classroom generally right now only has three staff members: an opening staff member, a closing staff member, and then a runner who takes the children back and forth to the doors," said Jill Marini, Director of Early Learning and School Age Programs for the YWCA Hartford Region.
According to Marini, parents don't come in the center. They have scheduled times and the runner picks them up at the door, they ask five very important health screening questions.
They get their temperature taken and the child gets taken back to the classroom.
The organization is trying to limit the traffic that's coming in and out of the door and the number of contacts a child or staff member may have with anybody outside the center, so they're in small pods so if a child does get sick, it only affects a small pod of children."
The YWCA Hartford Region runs five early learning centers for children ages birth through five years old.
Other measures in the centers include reduced class sizes, social distancing, increased sanitization and face mask requirements.
However, Marini said implementing new safety measures is not the only challenge child care centers across the state are facing during this health crisis.
"Some of them couldn't afford to keep their staff and they can't afford to reopen. They don't have the resources to reopen so now we have an even greater shortage of child care spaces that are available to working parents. So our field is in disarray. If more child care centers can't open how do parents go back to work?" said Marini.
"Before the pandemic, we were already short 50,000 infant and toddler spaces for parents that needed to go to work, so we had a big problem before Covid," said Beth Bye, Commissioner for the Connecticut Office of Early Childhood. But now, even compared to that time when we were already short on child care, we only have 44% of the seats that were available to families pre-Covid available now."
Commissioner Bye called support for early learning centers a priority of the OEC and Governor Lamont's administration.
"We have all told, sent out about $125 million since March to help programs sustain, to help pay for spaces. We're using the federal dollars, the state dollars, everything that we have is pretty much out the door," Commissioner Bye continue. "Our final program is sending business grants to help programs stay in business, so we're doing everything we can, but those funds as I said are really running out, so when people talk about discussions in Washington stalled, they have real impacts on businesses in Connecticut and families in Connecticut."
Child care programs are required to report COVID-19 cases to the State Department of Public Health and their local health authority.
The Office of Early Childhood has also been requesting that open providers report any cases to them.
According to that data reported to the OEC, 10 children in child care programs have tested positive for COVID-19 since March, and 37 child care staff members have tested positive.
A data report completed by researchers at UCONN using those numbers concluded that Connecticut residents are 10 times more likely to catch COVID-19 from general exposure in the state than in a child care.
However, there are limitations to this analysis because the cases are self-reported and it's not clear whether the cases were confirmed with a test or not.
Commissioner Bye said it's also hard to know whether these cases originated in the child care centers or in the community.