Local preschools reopen and adapt to smaller group of kids

“We are so happy to have them back here”

By Katherine Nettles

All three childcare centers in Crested Butte and Crested Butte South have reopened their doors after a seven-week break, and while each is operating with a reduced number of children and staff, they are all adjusting to the new normal and working to ensure more children will be able to join them as summer approaches.

Preschool directors or staff members now stand outside the entrance to Paradise Preschool, Stepping Stones Children’s Center and Little Red Schoolhouse wearing an apron and mask, holding a clipboard and a thermometer each morning. Every child is screened before admission, parents stay outside and several other new protocols are in place for the children to keep germ sharing to a minimum.

And children seem to have adjusted.

“It’s gone pretty well, despite all the things,” says Jessica Rutherford, owner/director of Little Red. “I think everybody is pretty happy to be back. The kids are pretty unfazed by all the protocols. And they just are really resilient kids.”

Stepping Stones executive director Jennifer Burks said the same of her preschool-aged children “doing a fantastic job” with all the protocols and no complaints. “You can tell the parents have prepped them before coming to school because they were not shocked when asked to put their masks on,” she says.

Ben Poswalk, director of Paradise Preschool, says he and his staff have been pleasantly surprised. “We all anticipated that masks for children would be a challenge to bond with teachers, maintain and keep clean,” he said. But the children have been “exceeding our expectations.”

During the time they were closed, Poswalk and his colleagues focused on being proactive, bringing forward recommendations to Gunnison County Health director Joni Reynolds that she accepted and incorporated in her public health orders.

“While we have all faced roadblocks, we have worked together to find solutions to the issues as a united force. With a mindset of serving our families and the greater community these partnerships have made it possible,” he says. 

One thing that came of the collaboration was creating a “social story” for the children to help them understand that masks keep everyone safer, and likening them to superheroes.

The weeks of closure did take a financial toll, however.

Various combinations of federal loan programs, Buell Foundation grants, Gunnison County Early Childhood Council and private donations helped each center. Volunteers spent hours sewing both kid-sized masks and adult-sized masks to supply them to the schools. Some families either donated their tuition for March and April, or paid it in advance to be used as a credit in the future. Many other families had their own income losses to manage, though, and overall childcare revenue was—and still is—significantly lower. 

Rutherford, owning the sole childcare center in the North Valley that is not a non-profit, said her particular small business model had additional hurdles, but many of her families are receiving essential worker aid, and she said that has made a huge difference in their ability to come back.

“I’ve been able to do payroll the entire time I’ve been closed,” she says, although she hasn’t paid herself. “I also had to refund a lot of money for the opposite situation…I have a large variety of situations going on among my families,” she said, which both Stepping Stones and Paradise echoed.

“It’s my business, my building, my everything. So it is a different situation, although we were all really united and worked together as a team,” she says of Little Red and her contemporaries.

Now with the reopening, all three centers report significantly smaller numbers of students attending this month, and some lost teachers. All say the smaller numbers are for a variety of reasons, whether health-related or financial. 

“Teacher turnover is mostly for health reasons, they are nervous to contract the virus,” says Burks. 

Rutherford says she has two teachers with school-aged children who cannot return due to lack of childcare. She also lost one teacher who doesn’t agree with the local politics behind the COVID-19 response, and doesn’t want to wear a mask. Poswalk says he retained about 80 percent of his teachers and has now hired two replacements.

As everyone gets used to the smaller capacity, the teachers and staff are all adjusting to more rigorous cleaning practices and altered schedules to allow for sanitation.

“It’s been just an amazing amount of effort that the staff had stepped up in their own time and made things work, “ says Poswalk. “We were thinking [end of day sanitation] would only take an hour, and the first couple days it took more like three hours.” He said Paradise has also upped the hours of its regular janitor.

“We have to do some major disinfecting. So that’s kind of challenging,” says Rutherford. “But we figured out a lot of it last week,” and her open classroom layout has actually lent itself to cleaning one area at a time while kids aren’t using it.

Summer uncertainties

As for summer, all are hoping to be able to bring in more kids and proceed with their usual camp programs that include a heavy dose of outside time and field trips throughout the valley. 

Poswalk says around 65 percent of families have enrolled for summer, and the remaining families are hopeful but waiting to commit. He said he usually gets a few families from out of town as well, and with so many unknowns about visitors, that portion of students has not taken shape for any of the centers.

He and the other directors emphasized that their ultimate focus is on serving the local families and making sure they feel safe and comfortable.

Rutherford said she has a few families who will usually drop in while visiting for a month or so. She hasn’t heard any inquiries yet, except for one family who works at Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory.  They are not sure if they will have work yet.

“The most uncertain group of parents are those in the lodging and tourism industry,” she says.

Most of all, Rutherford says,  “I don’t want my current families to feel that their health is at risk…I would like my long-term people to be comfortable.”

“There is still a lot of uncertainty. I have had two out of 25 summer families reach about summer enrollment,” says Burks. “At this time we are not sure if we will be accepting tourist families—we are waiting to see what the future restrictions on travelers will be. For now, we are happy to help the working families of our community and get the kiddos back together—they sure did miss each other.”