N.J. daycares are reopening, but parents wonder whether it’s safe to send kids back – NJ.com

For Cadence Hulme, working from home while caring for her two children has been difficult the past three months amid the coronavirus outbreak.

Although Gov. Phil Murphy announced daycares will reopen June 15 statewide, Hulme says she feels uneasy sending her 15-month old daughter and four-year-old son back to their Freehold facility. Germs are a given in child care centers, with kids putting dirty toys in their mouths and playing together in clusters.

Since enrolling her kids, Hulme says they’ve contracted a few common infections, like strep throat. She is nervous her children could get COVID-19 at daycare and pass it on to their older, more vulnerable grandparents.

So her son and daughter won’t be returning in mid-June, and will be placed on a waiting list for the fall.

“Right now, we don’t feel comfortable… Is an almost 4-year-old going to wear a mask all day? Is he not going to hug his friends? No. Is he going to share toys? Yes. So there’s a lot of concern there,” she said. “In our house, we can kind of control it. There’s not all this contact.”

Other parents are ready to send their kids back.

Kathy Nowak-Leja has been working from home and said it’s been difficult to give her 5-year-old the attention he needs, so he will be heading to Little Footsteps in Wayne in a week, where she feels confident he’ll be safe.

The state Department of Children and Families has a list of new requirements for New Jersey’s daycare centers, including not permitting anyone with symptoms or a fever of more than 100.4 degrees from entering the facility and limiting class sizes to 10 kids with staff members not moving between groups. Workers must wear face coverings and children over the age of 2 will be “encouraged” to wear them, “whenever feasible.”

Centers must also be cleaned and sanitized daily. The state posted a self-assessment checklist for operators online.

At Lightbridge Academy, a daycare chain with nearly 40 locations in New Jersey, about 60% of the 7,000 families enrolled prior to the pandemic are returning this month, said Kayla Bodel, a spokeswoman for the company.

The Lightbridge Academy in Westfield is enacting external drop-off and pick-up, additional cleaning, minimizing mixing groups of children or staff and limiting visitors, said owner Sue Romano.

The facility also has a new air filtration system that continuously kills airborne pathogens, Romano said. The technology uses ultraviolet lamps, ionized hydrogen peroxide and a HEPA filter, she said.

“Anyone who is responsible for the wellbeing of children should be taking this seriously. However, I feel confident that with the support of our families and with procedures we have in place, we will be able to operate safely,” said Romano.

Still, Dr. Lawrence Kleinman of Rutgers University has concerns about the reopening of daycare.

Since March, only children of essential workers have been permitted to attend daycare. He said the state would have benefitted from periodically testing those kids and their families to see which were positive for the virus, and how it spread among relatives. Such a practice would have created data officials could use when planning the reopening.

“You would see who’s getting infected that you don’t know. Without actively looking for it in a systematic fashion, you’re not going to have interpretable data. You’ll have anecdotes and stories,” said Kleinman, director of the Division of Population Health, Quality, and Implementation Sciences in the Department of Pediatrics at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.

While children are less likely to get seriously ill from coronavirus, they can carry and spread it, Kleinman said. And some have developed a rare, multi-symptom inflammatory syndrome that can be deadly. In New Jersey, 32 kids have been infected by the disease, which appears to be a new illness that is an “aggressive” immune system response to the coronavirus, the state Department of Health said.

With the high amount of interaction in daycares, he said parents should be cautious about sending their kids back. Babies need diapers changed, children spit and put objects in their mouths and convincing a young person to wear a mask for eight hours can be challenging, depending on their temperament.

He recommends daycares limit groups to four children and one adult. The state’s requirements for group sizes allow for double that, though daycares can be more strict.

“Ten is still a sizeable group. It’s better than 12 or 15, but it’s not insignificant,” Kleinman said.

The state requires workers to wear disposable gloves and wash their hands between each diaper change, but Kleinman said workers should also wear gowns and smocks for extra protection. He said the virus can be transmitted by stool.

Overall, he says, people should look at their personal situation before deciding to send their kid to daycare, including whether the child interacts with someone at home who is immunocompromised and whether the parents need to return to their workplace and are unable to manage care.

The child’s age and temperament could also play a role, he said. Older children are more mobile and often have an independent streak, he said, making it harder to stop them from hugging, touching others and removing their mask.

“You have real people out of work with no money who are trying to provide safe environments at home and they need help,” Kleinman said. “I don’t view this in isolation with a rigid notion that we should not open daycare. What I’m saying is, I would do it very cautiously.”

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Avalon Zoppo may be reached at azoppo2@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @AvalonZoppo.