I had replied a few weeks ago that we had closed our final two locations on March 26th. We closed due to decreased enrollment, attendance and loss of revenues. We applied for the PPP on April 3rd and were approved and received our funds on April 7th so we may plans to reopen on April 13th since we at least had enough money to cover payroll for the next 8 weeks. However later that week, at the last minute the Governor of Texas issued new orders that restricted open day cares to only serving families of essential workers and requiring the parents of those children to fill out a new government form verifying their essential worker status.
So we had to move our start date from April 13th to April 20th to give us time to get all of the forms collected from the parents and also change our drop off and pick up routines that had been updated that same week by the CDC.
We just reopened this week and have had to restructure how we operate during the day. We have 8 classrooms, but have closed the infant room so we are only using 7 and have reduced capacity to 10 people per room including the teachers. We have 2 teachers for the toddler room 12-18 months so capacity for that classroom is 8 students, while the other 6 classrooms have a capacity of 9 students and 1 teacher for a total of 62 students in the building. We normally have 120 +. We have changed our normal hours of 6:30 am to 6:30 pm to 7:00 am to 6:00 pm. We have the staff working two shifts: We have 8 teachers from 7:00 to 12:30 and 8 teachers from 12:30 to 6:00. However everyone is still getting paid 40 hours per week as one of the requirements of the PPP is that employees get paid the same amount and time they were getting prior to the crisis. Our cook comes in from 7:00 am to 2:00 pm and then we have 1 receptionist from 7:00 am to 12:30 p.m and the other receptionist from 12:30 -6:00. We also have 3 staff that are staying at home for their own safety because they are over 60, but they are still getting paid for a 40 hour week per the PPP requirements. The reason we have so many people working and paying the ones at home is that the PPP requires you to maintain the same # of employees over the 8 week period in order for the loan to be forgiven. Prior to this we had 8 hour shifts that overlapped to help cover lunch periods and 2 staff that came in from 10:30 to 2:30 to help cover lunches.
Since we started back this past Monday we are averaging between 25-30 students which is about the same number as when we closed before. That number of "paying students" is barely enough to cover the payroll for the 16 staff that are covering the open classrooms. Without the PPP, we would not be able to be open. With such a small number of students we are okay on supplies for now, but if attendance increases we will quickly run out of those supplies and everything seems to be at least on a 2 week back order.
Everyone is adjusting to the new schedule and procedures, such as wearing mask and gloves including the kids 2/12 and older, however things still don't feel right. We are trying to make everything light and fun for the kids to make it easier to adjust to having a schedule again, but curriculum probably wont resume for a few more weeks.
We still don't have a plan for what happens when the PPP loan runs out in about 6 weeks. Even if attendance increases to the maximum number we could have in the building per the current social distancing guidelines, it is still half the number that we had before and will not make up for incredible amount of revenue that we have already lost. Just keeping our fingers crossed that the government comes up with a second stimulus package in addition to the current PPP which you can only apply for once.
If you are planning on reopening soon, and have any questions about the information I shared above, or if I didn't cover something you have a question about, please feel free to send me those questions.
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Tim Kaminski
Director/Owner
Gingerbread Kids Academy
Richmond TX
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Original Message:
Sent: 04-24-2020 12:36 PM
From: Michelle Fanwick
Subject: Looking Forward - what will it take to reopen programs?
I agree with you. I work with a group of teachers but feel the same. We are usually not closed only on certain holidays. How long is this going to go on for. I don't know your age you work wi but I work with the preschool age and all. I feel like we will have to start all over teach them the rules like wash your hands if the parents did not keep that going which I hope they have. It's hard to think. The wether is nice will they even listen or not for the summer months. Hope all goes well.
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Michelle
Original Message------
Thank you for bringing that up. We run an after school program in Queens, New York. Our area has been the most affected by the virus, and our busy streets look like a ghost city. We use public schools for our programs, and summer is coming up. If public schools do open again, how will we know what to do and how to keep our kids safe? We usually have six groups of children under 7 yrs old, and addressing the distance between children is not going to be easy. We don't even know how to plan and what to plan for our summer camp. Will it open by the summer? Will parents want to enroll children in the program? How can we afford to pay our staff or guarantee they will have a job when they come back if we don't even know what parents are thinking or planning? It's just hard to plan and I hope to follow this post to hear what others are doing.
We have been doing our virtual classes using zoom for our meetings and recording lessons for our children daily. I hope this will all be over soon.
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Tatiana Gomides
University of Hawaii Maui
Kahului HI
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