Yes, we stayed open but it was a difficult decision. As owners we had to balance the safety of the teachers, the safety of the parents dropping off and picking up and children attending against the fact that Florida deemed daycares as an essential business.

Some parents were still working in vital jobs such as in the City Commissioners Office, Nursing, Banking, Food Supply and Doctors Offices. They needed Childcare in order to perform their important work.

We made a business decision to waive all tuition payments if the Parents had lost their job, been furloughed or had so little hours that it would be impossible to put food on the table or pay the mortgage/Rent. After taking into account who would not be requiring services and who would, we estimated we would lose 80% of our Tuition income.

BUT, we felt it was worth keeping open to not only keep our school afloat but also to offer daycare to those essential workers. Because of the much lower enrollment, we offered our teachers a protected position if they wanted to stay home with their own children for social distancing safety measures. Two took up our offer.

We followed all the State mandated rules on remaining open to which we added our own safety measures, such as parents not being allowed to come past out front lobby and taking the children temperature on entry. We also suspended tours of the center. Masks were issued to the teachers and we did not allow our cook to do the normal weekly shopping but ordered online for delivery to the center.

Now restrictions are being lifted we still intend to keep some of our safety measures in place for the protection our Teachers, Parents and Children.

Slowly but surely our small students are returning and we have reinstated tours for parents looking for Daycare. We have recently enrolled 3 families and are approaching our centers capacity and will need to add to our waiting list that was pretty long before the Virus fell upon us all.

Let’s hope we don’t have another pandemic

Front Lobby Desk with Notices of Restrictions