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Permission granted by Alabama Department of Early Childhood
Pre-to-3: While some preschoolers learn online, most programs seek stability
Stimulus funds provide $3.5 billion that will help cover the cost of
care for children of essential workers, but offer “minimal resources to
providers or their staff.”
Linda Jacobson
April 9, 2020
Early last month, Rhian Allvin, executive director of the National
Association for the Education of Young Children, published a blog post
with the title, “Making Connections: There’s No Such Thing as Online
Preschool.”
The premise of the article was that an online early education
curriculum is in no way “comparable to a high-quality, full-day,
full-year early-childhood education program.”
Unfortunately, stay-at-home orders have put a halt to many young
children’s first year in the classroom, and online platforms are the
primary way they are interacting with their teachers and classmates.
“I have video called them to discuss the unexpected changes that
have been happening, see what they have been doing since we have been
out of school, and let them know I miss them,” says Heather Williams, a
pre-K teacher at Central Georgia Technical College’s Child Development
Center in Warner Robins, Georgia.
With her students’ families already using the Remind app before schools
closed, she was able to continue using the tool to send daily
suggestions for learning and play at home. “They send me pictures of
things they are doing at home, and I share them with the class,” she
says, adding that some families also connect with her through a
Facebook group.
Layoffs and closures
But Williams is among the early educators fortunate enough to be
working. The majority of those in the early education field work in
community- and home-based programs. And Allvin estimates roughly 70% of
child care centers across the country shut down in the span of a week.
A tracker from the Hunt Institute shows 17 states have closed child
care facilities, while the rest are allowing programs to operate under
certain restrictions.
“We’re in a position so that so many providers are making decisions
about whether they lay off their staff,” Allvin says, adding that with
some providers focusing on how to access stimulus money to stabilize
their programs, most can’t “even start to wrap their heads around
making content available for families.”
In addition, while stimulus funds for child care — $3.5 billion — will
help cover the cost of care for children of essential workers, it
provides “minimal resources to providers or their staff,” said Lea
Austin, executive director of the Center for the Study of Child Care
Employment at the University of California, Berkeley. The center is
conducting a survey to better understand the extent of layoffs and
closures in California.
The center’s leaders argue those early educators continuing to work
should be earning "hazard pay." And advocates are calling for future
stimulus packages to include much more for the child care industry.
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