Two weeks into the COVID-19 crisis, Deneka Alexander, executive director of Tiny Steps Academy in Gulfport, reopened her child care center to support the parents working through the pandemic.
Her 10,000-square-foot facility can hold up to 150 children, but as parents have become unemployed or continue working from home after the economy screeched to a halt in March, her attendance dropped to fewer than 40 kids.
“Just imagine: lights, water and everything keeps going. I still have to provide food and you name it for my children and give them the best care,” Alexander told Mississippi Today in late May. “I really don’t know how long we’re going to be able to keep the doors open.”
Across the state, 42% of centers have lost at least half of their revenue and 51% cannot currently pay even half of their monthly expenses, according to responses from 425 centers through a survey conducted by The Graduate Center for the Study of Early Learning and the Center for Research Evaluation at the University of Mississippi.
The survey did not distinguish between child care providers mostly reliant on government subsidies or centers with higher-income, private-pay customers.
Mississippi officials closed public schools in mid-March but did not make any determination about the state’s 1,462 licensed child care centers, more than half of which have closed. As of late May, just 636 remained open, according to the Mississippi Department of Human Services.
Local health officials told child care centers to follow Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendations for preventing the spread of COVID-19, including increasing the intensity of cleaning and disinfecting within the facilities and limiting the number of children to each classroom, which requires additional staff.
