A daycare provider in Sudbury has words of reassurance for families preparing for the new school year, which begins in less than two weeks. In the brief time that daycares have been reopened, things have been going OK, despite the COVID-19 pandemic.
Tracy Saarikoski, executive director of Discovery Early Learning & Care, said ever since daycare centres were given permission to re-open earlier this summer, most have been operating with greatly reduced capacity and fewer children, but still functioning very well.
There have been no cases of COVID-19 reported among any daycare youngsters in Northeastern Ontario.
The City of Greater Sudbury lists 35 licensed daycare operations in the municipality. Discovery operates in four separate locations.
Saarikoski said many parents have concerns about youngsters going back to school, but she said daycare centres have done well by working the bugs out of many scenarios that might have been a challenge.
"We have been open and have our best practices, and it has really taught us a lot, and so we are excited to share some of those good practices with our school board partners," she said.
"Our programs are doing well, and I think we can echo that across our whole community. The early childhood professionals have really, really stepped up in supporting these children and helping them be calm."
One example that had some people worried was the wearing of face masks by staff members.
"Wearing a mask is nothing new to these children,” she said.
“They've seen it out in the community. Parents have been great in having those first conversations with the children — you know that we're wearing masks that protect you from our germs and sharing that in different ways and I'm wearing a mask to protect me from you, kind of thing.”
She added that in some cases with the older children, getting them used to face masks is helpful because when school is back in session, all students from Grade 4 to Grade 12 will be asked to wear masks.
Saarikoski said it is important for the children "to feel safe, happy and not frightened about what's happening."
She added that the staff are not seeing any anxiety issues.
"You know I really wondered what it was going to look like," she said. Saarikoski added that parents are pleased to see the level of calm as children are dropped off each day.
Saarikoski also mentioned it had been something of an inconvenience to learn all the new procedures, but staff members adapted and they got used to it.
"The screening, the cleaning, we know that all that is going to have to continue,” she said.
“This pandemic is not over at all. We know that the health requirements for this will still need to be in place. So we will just be dealing with more children in the one environment now with the school year returning.”
She said there are still some outstanding issues to be resolved for daycare operators. One concern is whether daycare centres will be allowed to ease restrictions on the child-to-staff ratio that was put in place back in June.
It meant they were no longer allowed to have 24 children per cohort. The number was cut back to eight children to a group and then gradually upped to 15 children per cohort.
Saarikoski said it was difficult because many workers were laid off and there were not enough qualified daycare workers to handle additional children in larger cohorts.
She said that many families have decided not to return their children to daycare until they feel more confident about the progress of the school year. In some other families, she said, one or the other of the parents has not yet been called back to work.
At some point, she said, the hope is that daycare centres will be allowed to operate as they did pre-COVID but with updated cleaning and distancing regulations.
