Two months after schools closed across Pennsylvania last March, there were around 45,000 school aged children in child care centers across the commonwealth. Those numbers from the Office of Child Development and Early Learning (OCDEL) might preview a second influx of children into day-cares as schools aim to reopen at the end of August.
The issue now is, many parents are back at work full-time, and in the event they can't work from home, can child cares accommodate virtual and remote learning for children who have to learn from home?
Tracey Campanini, deputy secretary for OCDEL, says while most people believe child care only exists for preschool children, toddlers, and infants, there are many centers available for kids up to 15 years old.
"We’ll be working from OCDEL to support child care and accommodate any requests to support providers, and expand support for families in the communities that need it," Campanini said.
Campanini says if parents know they'll need day care for their children during school hours, to first contact the school district to discuss the family's needs. Then, using the website www.findchildcare.pa.gov, parents can search for centers by location, distance, and age availability to find a child care location that works for them.
For the purposes of this story, we wanted to see how many locations in a given school district could accommodate a child trying to do remote learning while in a day care setting. We used the York Suburban School District, as they are planning to have students learn with a hybrid model of in-person learning two days a week, and at-home remote learning three days. We then extended the search for a 10 mile radius from the zipcode "17403", and chose 10 year olds as an age.
FOX43 called all 10 child care centers which came up; five needed a voice message left, one was a wrong number, one was closed due to COVID-19, one said they could not accommodate that child's learning needs, and two said they could.
"We are challenged to think of things in new and different ways, so we are trying to be as adaptable and supportive as possible," said Campanini.
OCDEL said if parents have to put their children in a child care setting, they would be responsible for the cost, unless the family is low income and qualifies for assistance under the Child Care Works program.