We need to know when we can reopen, say N.J. daycare and summer camp operators now in ‘limbo’ – NJ.com

Operators of New Jersey summer camps and daycares said Thursday they’ll need financial support, clear guidance and plenty of time to hire and train staff before they reopen — whenever that may be.

Most daycare centers across the state have been closed since April 1, with those providing care to children of essential workers only permitted to keep their doors open. Gov. Phil Murphy said this week daycares may be allowed to reopen “sooner than later.”

Beverly Lynn, CEO of Essex County nonprofit that connects kids to child care, Program for Parents, said there’s a lot of anxiety around reopening, and child care providers need help from the state as they confront higher costs, from outfitting staff with personal protective equipment to hiring more staff to bring down classroom ratios and sanitize facilities and supplies.

Lynn testified before a small Senate committee on the state’s economic recovery Thursday. The committee previously has heard testimony from major health care providers, car dealers and retailers.

“No one believes that the centers will return to the standard operating procedures that we practiced pre-COVID, so we are reimagining a different child care program and system,” Lynn said.

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“For now these are the unanswered questions: what will child care look like? When will we be able to open? What new policies will providers have to comply with around group size, child-adult ratios, number of children that can participate in the program, and the list goes on,” she said.

Nearly every child care provider who testified Thursday stressed reopening isn’t as simple as turning the lights on, and once they’re given the green light to reopen they’ll need time to hire new staff and train on social distancing and sanitizing.

“We don’t want to just be told ‘Ok, you can open up as of Monday’,” said Karyn Jarzyk, who owns three Kiddie Academy in Hamilton, Marlton and Runnemede. “We need time to probably hire new staff, because all of our staff may not return. … We need to hire new staff, we need to train those new staff, we have need to have them background checked and we need to make sure they understand the new health and saefty regulations that I’m sure we’re going to have.”

Jarzyk said her facilities are providing care for children of essential workers and are sanitizing toys continuously, have moved to curbside drop-off and are conducting temperature and wellness checks, the results of which are reported to the health department daily. Staff are wearing personal protective equipment and she’s put in place a strict sick policy, Jarzyk said.

In addition, children don’t move between classrooms or teachers, she said.

“All of these things that we were implementing before and are implementing now are really allowing us to continue to work in a safe environment, or as safe of an environment as we can have,” she said.

Andy Pritikin, owner of Liberty Lake Day Camp in Burlington County, told lawmakers that summer camp operators still do not know if, when or how they might be able to reopen. In the absence of a timeline for reopening, more and more camps are announcing cancellations, he said.

Many municipal summer camps and programs that operate on school property already have been called off, and now even big, outdoor summer camps “who would have potentially opened if given guidance by the state” are now canceling, Pritikin said.

“While I am glad that we err on the side of caution, summer camp programs are living in state of limbo, and this is not just the plight of camp operators, it’s the uncertainty for the families we serve,” he said. “Every day we delay at this point is resulting in thousands of school aged children being left without child care for this upcoming summer.”

Most camps have considered June 1 their deadline to make a decision on reopening, he said.

“We’ve been tap-dancing with our clients, pushing back deadlines, creating worst-case scenario refund policies, buying time, and frankly prolonging our agony in the hope that the state and the Department of Health will save our business as well as the child care options for tens of thousands of New Jersey children whose parents will be expected to return to the workplace” he said.

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Samantha Marcus may be reached at smarcus@njadvancemedia.com.