Coronavirus Shuttered My Preschool. Without Support, Thousands More Will Follow.
Five years ago, I opened Creative Explorers, a childcare program at my home in Los Angeles. My program initially served 14 children, and I had planned to expand to serve 24 children this year. Instead, the COVID-19 pandemic forced me to close my program and file for unemployment along with the three teachers I previously employed, and several of our families, who no longer had childcare for their children.
I expected to reopen. In fact, back in March, when Los Angeles public schools first closed, we briefly considered remaining open to serve our families, but lacked the additional guidance and funding we needed for cleaning supplies, materials, and food. Still, we kept trying to find a way. I applied for the Paycheck Protection Program, but never heard back. We walked through every inch of space in my home to try to create an adequate social distancing plan that would keep our children, families, and staff safe, but to do so would have meant cutting our capacity—and our revenue—by nearly 80%. This was financially unworkable; and in any case, only two of our families were comfortable sending their children back to us. Yet like most providers, we relied on parent fees. Two-thirds of our families pay out of pocket for childcare—and we haven’t collected those fees since we closed in March.
As an added challenge, two of my co-teachers and I have our own elementary-school age children. As schools in Los Angeles will continue with distance learning this fall, we will have to continue to help support our own children. Like the families we serve, we are in an impossible position.
Even in normal times, many childcare programs in California—and across the United States—operate from tenuous positions: independently and with thin margins. Yet these unprecedented times called for public support, additional funding, and resources, each of which I urged Congress to provide back in May so that I and so many others could reopen and stay open safely. Yet it is now August, and Congress has not passed a relief bill. Although there is bipartisan support for it, there has been no funding provided for childcare since the CARES Act. I have not received what was needed. And so, I have decided to close my doors for good.
My story is being repeated across the country, as providers have faced the heartbreaking reality that the already-perilous economics of childcare have failed completely. A survey conducted in June by the National Association for the Education of Young Children found that nearly 40% of the 5,000 providers surveyed were certain they would close permanently without public assistance, and more than half thought they couldn’t last through the end of the year with reduced enrollment and no additional support. Of the subset of California providers surveyed, 47% expect to close in six months if they remain below 80% capacity.
This will devastate families, children, educators, and businesses, each of whom rely on childcare programs in their communities. In April, the Center for American Progress estimated that the pandemic could cost the United States about 4.5 million childcare slots, or nearly half of all slots available before the pandemic. That would be a staggering loss especially considering that even before the pandemic, more than half of Americans lived in a childcare desert—an area where there were too few providers to meet the needs of the population.
Before the pandemic, Creative Explorers would have helped fill that gap in Los Angeles by expanding our operation to meet the needs of more families. Instead, the closure of my program will be part of the growing crater in lost childcare availability. This lack of care will make full-scale economic recovery impossible in the short-term, as parents will be unable to return to work, and it will hobble the economy in the long run, as children suffer the consequences of a lack of quality early learning in their earliest years.
To say that childcare programs like mine are essential to our country’s economic recovery is an understatement. We are a lifeline to our families and our communities. Without a meaningful federal response to provide $50 billion to stabilize these vital services in a relief package, childcare will be the weak link that prevents America’s recovery.
The families that my colleagues and I served and those that we had planned to welcome already had limited options. Now they—and so many others—may have none.
