By Elise Keitz, Senior Director of Operations

We are seeing community panic in Seattle.

Governor Wolf just issued a two-week mandatory closure of all nonessential business. It begins at midnight tonight.

I wanted to let you know that we had 32 children withdraw from the center this past week due to concerns over COVID-19.

Subject: Google is marking our childcare centers as closed.

I’m sure you have this, but this is a link to a CDC page on Managing Anxiety and Stress related to COVID-19.

These were just some of the opening lines for emails I received in early March. Our first major COVID decision came on Monday, March 2, when our northern Seattle centers were navigating the first of the U.S. cases in their communities, and the first school districts decided to close. Early Learning Academies (ELA) provides before- and after-care as well as school transport for children ages five through 12. But with COVID-19, if a school is closing should we continue to provide care for those school-agers? We found ourselves in an untenable position: Upset parents of infants, toddlers, and preschoolers if we allowed school-age children from closed schools into the center, or leave working parents of school-agers in the lurch without reliable care. Ultimately, we decided that if the school was closed for precautionary measures only, then those children could come for full-day care.

This was just the first of our daily tests. The external noise and internal fears were deafening and multiplying. Our competitors were holding to their withdrawal policies, requiring parents to pay one week, two weeks, or even a month’s worth of tuition. At ELA, we believe every decision made with children and families in mind is an important one. There were so many scenarios, so many paths, and choices beckoning us. Ultimately, reactive decision-making would only entangle us in the noise.

Leading By Design
We held up our core values as a light in the fog, which allowed us to step out of the moment and ask: When we get to the other side of this, how will we want our families to remember us? As people faced health uncertainties and economic hardships, would we want them to remember our requiring them to pay the full two weeks’ notice for removing their children from our centers? When things got back to normal, why would those families ever choose to return to us?

No: We wanted to be remembered for leading from a conscientious, heart-centered place for our team members, our families, and the children. It’s simply the way we’re designed.

For parents who decided to withdraw their children, we asked them to pay out the remainder of the week, but refunded extra charges as needed. We chose not to close any of our centers: We would stay open for essential workers, even if this meant we kept the lights on for two children.

And it hurt—all of it. One center had only four children (down from 100 six weeks prior!). We furloughed staff when we had to, but also helped them hold onto their benefits.

And yet: We rallied as well.

• Our Core Values display contest galvanized the team around our company values.
• We called, emailed, posted, and showed up.
• We sent “Thinking of You” videos to children at home.
• Our curriculum and training specialist created kid-friendly activities for parents to do at home.
• Our center in Macungie, PA, held a teacher drive-by parade for children at home.
• We broadcasted the No Kid Hungry texting service on social media.
• We designated a task force to rewrite our health and safety procedures.
• In Toledo, staff sent food and crayons home with children who needed a little extra care.
• Our center in Roxborough, CO, created a ”Take What you Need Board” with positive quotes, articles, sudoku puzzles, and materials children could use at home to support the newly minted parent-teachers.
• When PA, NJ, and OH closed childcare centers, we obtained emergency licenses to keep our for PA centers and Parma, OH, centers open as a temporary licensed pandemic center.

As with so many others, our lights might have been dimmed, but they would not be extinguished.

Searching for Normal
Now, as our centers are recovering from the early months of the pandemic, we’re working to help families find something resembling “normal”—normal where clean doesn’t mean sterile or unchildlike, where school-age children can distance-learn and have a schedule, where toddler rooms are full because while parents might work from home with infants…with toddlers? Not so much.

While we aren’t necessarily on the other side of this, I do think we’ve made tremendous, important strides. And we know for sure that, in its bones, ELA is a welcoming community that puts its values into practice when life gets hard. When I wonder whether this year has exhausted us or strengthened us, I remember that the center director who won our Core Values contest used her $50 Amazon prize to buy face masks for her teachers. What a privilege to know her (not to mention work beside her) and this passionate community during this remarkable time in history.