‘Here for the community’: Matthews child care center opens for essential workers’ kids

MATTHEWS, N.C. — The last thing most parents want to do is send their child to day care during a pandemic, but for a lot of essential workers there simply isn’t another option.

Only about half of the child care centers in North Carolina are still open. Many of them are stepping up to meet the need and taking in children while their parents are on the front lines.

Donna Sand, at COS Kids in Matthews, said it is strange to not see nearly 80 percent of her students who are now staying home because of the coronavirus.

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“Right now we’re running between 35 and 40 kids a day, from infants through 12 years old,” said Sand. “We typically have 15 classrooms. We’re now down to eight.”

It’s a major change and she acknowledges it’s risky to stay open -- both health - and money-wise - but says she feels she has to.

“We have people depending on us so as long as we have the staff to be here - we’re going to be here,” she said.

Her staff has been hit hard, too. Sand said she had to cut hours by half and even had to make implement layoffs.

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For those who are staying on, the state is allotting an extra $300 a month for teachers and $200 a month for full-time staffers.

“We’re feeling very blessed here for that much,” Sand said.

Under Gov. Roy Cooper’s executive order, new guidelines require child care centers that want to stay open to care for kids of essential employees.

Sand said here, that means doctors and nurses, painters, journalists and delivery workers for Amazon and DHL.

She said that because of the open space, she has been able to take in kids who didn’t attend before and those who don’t have stable homes.

“With the population that we serve, we just keep going back to that we are here for the community and that’s our mission as a nonprofit,” Sand said.

Some precautions that the child care center has taken are each class has to come out separately to the playground and the swings have been tied up so no one can use those.

Also, parents can’t go inside to pick up and drop-off their children.

Cooper has also signed another executive order that helps both parents and child care centers. It waives regulations on day cares, gives workers bonuses if their facility takes in the children of essential workers and helps those essential works pay for the care.

New guidance to allow daycares to open for first responders', critical workers? children New guidance to allow daycares to open for first responders', critical workers? children

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