ATLANTA — Some states are forcing child care centers to close.
Not Georgia.
Georgia Governor Brian Kemp is still allowing pre-school childcare programs across the state to remain open if they want to.
Some parents call that policy a godsend. Others are calling it irresponsible.
And yet, more and more child care programs in Georgia are voluntarily closing.
According to Georgia’s Department of Early Care and Learning (DECAL), just prior to the coronavirus pandemic, 330,000 pre-school children were attending the 4,400 licensed childcare programs across the state.
As of Friday, 1,200 of the childcare programs reported to DECAL that they had temporarily closed, while at least 963, so far, reported that they are still open. The rest had not yet reported their status to the state as of late Friday. Among those remaining open is Little Sunshine’s Playhouse & Preschool in Alpharetta.
“We need to be there for the parents that need us,” said Little Sunshine’s Brett Roubal, who is head of the Alpharetta school plus 24 others in 10 states.
Roubal said he does hear from parents who think he should close his schools, such as parents on DECAL’s Facebook page.
“If it’s important to close school which have children, why isn’t it important to close childcare center(s) as well, makes no sense to me,” one wrote.
“Ridiculous and irresponsible,” wrote another.
But parents who can’t work at home, especially those working on fighting the coronavirus pandemic, are grateful that childcare programs in Georgia are allowed to stay open.
“Whether it’s doctors, health care providers, EMS, police [officers], military, or other essential service providers that have to be out there to help get us through this,” Roubal said. “Could you imagine a scenario where essential service providers had no place to leave their children?”
Roubal said his employees are aggressively complying with all Centers for Disease Control and Prevention requirements and guidelines.
“We go over and above on everything that we can possibly do, to make sure that we’re safe and healthy for everybody - our teachers, our staff, our families -- as we can possibly be," he said.
Requiring childcare centers to close, he said, “would make a bad situation worse."
"All the precautions that we’ve taken, the decision that we’ve made, it makes us feel good about continuing to be there for our families," he added. "We are getting an outpouring of thankfulness and appreciation that we are staying open. Our parents are saying, ‘Thank you, thank you, we don’t know what we would do if you wouldn’t be around to help us out.’ It’s really just been overwhelming.”
YMCAs in metro Atlanta are offering childcare for healthcare workers, but those slots filled up fast.
So, the DECAL website, “Quality Rated,” provides a way for parents to find a pre-school child care program that’s still open. They can type in a zip code to see a map of the nearest ones that are open.
As of now, the state considers allowing them to stay open a public service and not a public health threat.
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