Toddlers and Twos
Some childcare facilities have operated through the summer as critical care facil- ities. Others will open for the first time on September 14. Here’s how they’ll handle it. Temperature-taking will be a staple of daycare routines, based on guidelines from the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources Bureau for Public Health. Any child or staff member with a temperature of 100 or above will not be allowed to enter their childcare facility and will be encouraged to contact their health provider for further guidance. Staff should wear cloth face coverings. According to Governor Justice’s mandate, chil- dren under nine are not required to wear face coverings, but parents or guardians should use their best judgement for children over two. Preventive measures include healthy hand hygiene; routine cleaning, sanitizing, and disinfecting of surfaces and objects; and a focus on outdoor and individual activities. For daycare facilities, an outbreak is defined as two rather than three cases within 14 days of each other and should be reported immediately to the local health department. Parents of toddlers and twos may find it reassuring that, while some children and infants have been known to test positive for COVID-19, adults make up the vast majority of cases.
THE RACE TO FACE-TO-FACE The rationale behind the return, and back-up modes of delivery and care.
Safety The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) is pushing for the return to in-person learning. Governor Jim Justice has also said the safest place for students is in school, in part to restore supportive services that were interrupted when the pandemic hit in the spring. Schools provide breakfasts and lunches; they also iden- tify and meet other physical, mental, and emotional needs that unfortunately aren’t always fulfilled at home. For some children, young children especially, these supports are critical for their safety and development. The school board will have protocols in place for con- tinuing supportive services through any closures.
Community Thirty-seven percent of families favor a five-day- a-week return to face-to- face instruction, reports a Monongalia County Board of Education survey of more than 6,700 parents, while 36 percent favor full-time remote learning. In order to meet the interests of all parents within the county, Monongalia County Schools opted for a blended model— for elementary students, single days of face-to-face instruction alternating with single days of remote instruction. A return to school, even half of the time, is important not only for students’ physical well- being, says the AAP, but for their psychological well- being as well. This will keep students connected with their learning communities.
Supplemental Care Elementary schools are looking for ways to help families with scheduling challenges. At any given time in the semester, a county’s students will attend in-person, remotely, or in a hybrid mixture of both based on where its COVID numbers place it in the state’s color-coding system. Changes between in-person learning, remote learning, and blended in-person and remote learning through the semester are likely to pose scheduling challenges for working parents with children who are too young to stay at home alone. Schools are working with before- and after-school partners to arrange options for supplemental care.
22 MORGANTOWN • AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2020
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online