By Ally Lanasa, Staff Writer

(Feb. 18, 2021) While restaurants are perhaps the most well-known victims of pandemic-related restrictions and closures, a lesser known service is having its troubles as well, and is why local childcare centers are hailing the opening of the Child Care Relief Fund announced by Gov. Larry Hogan last Friday.

Through the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2021, Maryland received additional federal funding to support child care for children and families. The Maryland State Department of Education is establishing a $60 million grant program to support eligible childcare programs statewide.

“Maryland’s childcare providers have made it possible for front line workers to continue their critical work throughout this public health emergency,” Hogan said in a press release. “As we continue to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, we are grateful to child care providers who have reopened and provided continued support to our children and families.”

The grant program is in addition to previous efforts to assist childcare providers, such as grants to support reopening efforts, sanitization and personal protective equipment as well as the essential personnel childcare program.

PHOTO COURTESY SANDRA BUCKWALTER
Anna Eubanks, school age and virtual school coordinator at Eastern Shore Early Learning on Worcester Highway in Berlin, disinfects the children’s equipment throughout the day.

Sandra Buckwalter, director and CEO of Eastern Shore Early Learning on Worcester Highway in Berlin, said her center received both rounds of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), $1,000 for cleaning and a Maryland Small Business Covid-19 Emergency Relief Grant for $10,000.

Carrie Coots, owner and director of Coastal Early Learning Center on Seahawk Road in Berlin, said she received one round of the PPP loans as well as some financial assistance from the state specifically for child care centers.

“In the face of the pandemic, Maryland’s family and center-based childcare providers have remained vital partners in our early education efforts and have been essential to the State’s overall recovery efforts,” State Superintendent of Schools Dr. Karen B. Salmon said in a press release. “These additional grant funds will help support childcare providers manage increased costs, so they can continue to deliver safe, reliable and effective care to our children.”

Buckwalter plans to apply for the relief fund grants after suffering some serious business blows delivered by the pandemic.

“We’re down to half enrollment and the minimum wage goes up,” she said.

If awarded a grant, Buckwalter said she’d use the funds for staff salaries, cleaning supplies and everyday materials for the children.

As for the center’s safety protocols, the public is prohibited entry to the Eastern Shore Early Learning facility at this time.

Buckwalter said the center uses the HiMama app to conduct contactless check-in daily and record temperatures for the children ages six weeks to pre-kindergarten.

“We do it twice a day. We do it once in the morning and then we do it once in the afternoon,” she said.

The older children’s temperatures are manually recorded, Buckwalter added, because HiMama is only for the younger age group.

“Then, we have masks that I purchased that the children wear … that they never leave the building except for when I wash them,” she said. “They have two baggies – one baggy is for their dirty ones and one baggy is for their clean ones. They each have four.”

All staff members also wear masks.

PHOTO COURTESY SANDRA BUCKWALTER
Calyssa Guns, a 7-year-old student at Ocean City Elementary School, left, and Alexis Anoua, a 6-year-old student at Willards Elementary School, engage in distance learning at Eastern Shore Early Learning on Worcester Highway in Berlin with the protection of face coverings and a desk divider.

Additionally, the younger children are allowed to bring in their bedding, which the staff puts into specific bags Buckwalter bought throughout the week. At the end of the week, the bags go home to be washed.

As for babies, bottles can be brought from home in plastic reuseable bags or single-use plastic grocery bags that can be sanitized.

Eastern Shore Early Learning serves children 6 weeks old to 12 years old. Buckwalter added that the school-aged children keep their backpacks outside her office instead of going into the center with them. The center also uses desk dividers for remote learning that Buckwalter’s father built her.

There have been several cases of covid-19 among the children’s families and two related children tested positive but were asymptomatic. During the holidays, the Eastern Shore Early Learning building was closed for 14 days and the staff quarantined upon notifying the health department of the positive cases.

During the quarantine over Christmas, Buckwalter said two related staff members tested positive from an outside exposure.

Coastal Early Learning Center, which serves children 6 weeks old to 6 years old, has not had any recent positive cases of covid-19. In July 2020, a staff member and a child contracted the virus.

Coots plans to apply for grant funding to cover the expenses of additional cleaning and sanitization supplies as well as PPE for staff members.

“Just our normal supplies that we’ve always used have doubled, if not tripled, in cost, and then on top of that, we have increased supplies that we now have to use,” she said.

All staff members are required to wear masks throughout the day and children over the age of 5 are encouraged to wear masks as well.

“We do have a temperature check every morning when the children come in the building,” Coots said. “We have limited parents inside the building. We have the covid-19 questionnaire that each parent fills out every morning.”

Children are still allowed to bring their comforting items from home.

“They’re still children. We’re trying to do what we can do to keep the normalcy there for the kids and to keep them safe as well. It’s definitely a fine balance,” she said.

What has not changed during the pandemic is that staff members are urged to wash and sanitize their hands frequently as well as disinfect all equipment throughout the day, she added.

Coots also said she has experienced an influx of calls and emails to obtain information about the Coastal Early Learning Center.

“We have actually seen an increase in interest in enrollment, I think, due to the pandemic, especially with the older, kindergarten-aged children,” she said. “We had several kindergarteners stay this year, this [past] September. They stayed with us for their kindergarten year because of the pandemic with working parents not being able to stay home with their child and do the virtual schooling with them, so we actually had more kids stay with us this year.”

In addition, she said a lot of people are moving to the area because they can work remotely now.

The grant program began accepting applications on Tuesday. The online application for currently operating childcare facilities is due by March 3. Providers must explain how they plan to use the funds and submit required data, including enrollment data, losses incurred and how funds will be used.

For more information, visit earlychildhood.marylandpublicschools.org/.

On Tuesday, Hogan submitted a $1.59 billion supplemental budget for Fiscal Year 2022 to the state legislature as an amendment, including $931 million for local school systems to assist with the safe reopening of public schools; $434 million for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and the Pandemic EBT program; $128 million to support the state’s Child Care Scholarship program, including almost $60 million to help support licensed child care providers recover from the impact of the pandemic.