Monday marked the start of the Colorado Legislature’s special session called by Gov. Jared Polis to discuss COVID-19 relief, including stimulus for existing and new child care providers.
The proposed child care bill seeks to bring relief to a sector that has been heavily impacted by the pandemic by creating two emergency relief grant programs totalling more than $45 million for sustainability, remodeling and start-up funding.
“It’s a bipartisan bill that will open up new opportunities for local child care businesses as well as family members taking care of kids so parents can get back to work safely,” said Rep. Jonathan Singer.
The grant programs would mean more funding to support day-to-day operations for existing providers, as well as assistance for new providers to pursue licensing, said Carin Rosa, director of child care licensing at the Colorado Office of Early Childhood.
“Child care providers generate their revenue through tuition, and early on in the pandemic, especially when we were at the stay-at-home order, we also had limitations in group sizes for child care, so … (providers) were not receiving their full tuition payment needed to operate their business,” she said. “(This) greatly affected their bottom line.”
A recent report by Early Milestones Colorado shows close to 10% of Colorado’s child care providers have closed since the beginning of the pandemic and enrollment has decreased by 39% for children younger than 5.
Locally, the sector reflects similar trends.
Across Boulder County, about 70% of child care providers temporarily shut their doors early in the pandemic and just over 5% have permanently closed this year, said Danielle Butler, executive director of the Early Childhood Council of Boulder County.
“Immediately in March, when school districts and the country shut down, enrollment went down, only about 30% of providers stayed open,” she said, adding child care centers and in-home providers have slowly been reopening while adapting to COVID-related restrictions and requirements.
“Providers had to make a number of changes to stay in business and address personal protection equipment and gear, add cleaning supplies, increase cleaning routines,” she said. “They reduced their class size so they needed more staff to serve fewer children, which increased costs.”
Sarah Herren, co-owner and director of Here We Grow Early Childhood Learning center, has experienced such fluctuations and changes.
“We had a few families that disenrolled for limited time periods and some who disenrolled for longer periods,” she said. “We applied for a (Paycheck Protection Program) loan to get us through, especially early on, fortunately we were able to run as an essential business and take essential workers' children.”
For Aisling Barbour, a local in-home child care provider, lockdown restrictions forced her to temporarily shut down her business.
With her two daughters at home for remote learning in the spring, Barbour was unable to run her business without the proper license for all of the children in her care and had to stop for a few months.
“Shutting down was a tough choice but there was so much unknown back in March it felt like the best, safest option,” she said. “I reopened for two to three families mid-August, when school went back, but until I got my license I could only have two children per day plus my own two girls, so that made scheduling for myself and my day care parents hard.”
Herren said the pandemic has shone light on the sector and the fundamental need for child care, which she hopes will help her center and others carry through.
“Throughout the pandemic, the need for child care has definitely been placed in a good spotlight to realize how important it is and how we depend on it,” she said. “All families depend on child care to be able to work and survive.”
Beyond the impact on individual businesses and children, restrictions, disenrollment and closures have direct implications on economic recovery post-pandemic, said Longmont City Councilmember Tim Waters.
“The pandemic has revealed not just what a need it is for families but what a need it is for employers,” he said. “We couldn't reopen businesses and get people back to work if there weren't places for children to be safe and healthy.”
So far in 2020, Longmont has allocated $200,000 of the city budget to provide personal protective equipment and gear to local child care providers and is in the process of reviewing applications to distribute $705,000 of federal CARES Act funding through mini grants to be expended before the end of the year, according to Olga Bermudez, bilingual counselor at Children, Youth and Families and lead for the city’s Bright EYES coalition, an initiative to promote quality programs for preschool-aged children. EYES is an acronym for early years education stewards.
Passage of the bill in the special legislative session has the potential to support the plans of the city to continue addressing unmet needs, said Christina Pacheco Sims, Children, Youth and Families manager.
“I think the really unique and positive thing about Longmont is how (good) of a network we (have) and how collaborative we are within the community,” she said, adding multiple sectors have been working together for more than a decade.
“Should the state roll out funds in the form of grants, Longmont is really well positioned to go after those because we can leverage our partnerships,” she said. “We have already had those conversations, we know how and what we want to do.”
