By Loreen Pallas and Nicole Nothstine
For The Cordova Times
Dear School Board Members,
We write this letter to offer you encouragement as you face difficult decisions trying to navigate school reopening during these strange times we find ourselves in. Like you, we have a commitment to children and have a duty to provide them a safe, healthy, happy learning environment which they can thrive in. We would also like to give you the perspective of operating a childcare center during a pandemic and how we have managed to keep our kids healthy, happy and full of joy.
Children’s Pallas reopened to full capacity on June 1. We reopened according to the guidelines developed by the State of Alaska and our childcare licensing. We developed and implemented a COVID-19 mitigation plan which was approved by our local Incident Management Team. With a nearly full staff and decreased enrollment, the extra safety measures are manageable and have become routine practices for staff, children and parents.
The following is a list of our added safety measures for staff and children:
- Daily temperature checks
- Daily wellness screenings
- Hand washing upon arrival and hand sanitizer upon departure
- Increased hand-washing throughout the day
- Increased sanitizing or high touch areas
Ill children are isolated immediately, and parents notified. Children cannot return for a period of 72 hours or without a doctor’s clearance. No attendees are allowed admittance if they have traveled out of town without a seven-day wait period and negative COVID test. Increased outdoor play to allow for fresh air and exercise.
Masks are to be worn by staff only when closely interacting with parents. Children’s Pallas recognizes that this is not a one size fits all model and that we are operating at a much smaller scale than Cordova’s schools. However, if we can be open and provide the safest environment possible, we feel our school district can find a way to do the same.
Another thing to consider is if Cordova schools adopt a virtual learning model for the first nine weeks of school, will the role of childcare providers then become virtual learning facilitators? We currently have seven school-age children and 12 soon to be kindergarteners attending our center. The parents of these children depend on us to be able to work.
Most of these parents will not be able to leave work to facilitate their child’s online learning. Children’s Pallas has four staff members who have multiple children. How can they be present for their own children’s online learning while they are caring for the children at Children’s Pallas?
Lastly, we feel it is important to share our observations of how this pandemic can negatively affect children’s happiness and overall wellbeing if isolation and extreme social distancing continues in our community. During the early days of this pandemic, Children’s Pallas closed for two and a half months. During that time most families were practicing social distancing, and some were not leaving their homes much at all. When Children’s Pallas reopened, we noticed a change in some of our day care kids upon their return. We anticipated there would be some degree of shyness, but what we weren’t prepared for was that these kids who had spent hours every day together were unsure how to interact with one another. We could sense some children were nervous, withdrawn, and not sure how to play. In this case, it didn’t take long for the kids to return to as they were and by the end of the first week, our lively environment had fully returned. Now let’s consider our school-aged kids who have not had much social interaction with their peers since March. Imagine how children will be affected after not having social interaction with their peers for over half a year? Will our kids recover and bounce back as quickly as we hope, or will there be lasting effects on their socioemotional health?
Having Children’s Pallas open and full of life again has offered us a glimmer of hope. We wish each child in our community can thrive in the environment that they are in and experience a life full of happiness and joy without carrying the weight of this pandemic on their shoulders. We urge you to consider reopening Cordova’s schools to some capacity that will include in-person learning so our kids can get back to feeling a sense of normalcy, so our working parents can feel supported, and so our community can see a glimmer of hope in the happiness that flows through Cordova’s kids.
Loreen Pallas is an administrator for Children’s Pallas. Nicole Nothstine is a childcare associate for Children’s Pallas.
