It was early in March that Karen DeVos first started taking measures to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus at the day care center she runs. She told the parents at her Little Learners Early Childhood Center in Ada, Minnesota, that there would be a new, lower-contact drop-off protocol, and that anyone with a temperature of 100 degrees would be told to stay home. Show-and-tell was canceled, as she didn’t want children bringing anything into the classroom, and she hired an extra staff person to do even more cleaning than normal. Even then, “the scariness of the situation hadn’t really set in yet,” she said. As the pandemic quickly spread across the country and her governor ordered some businesses to close, she faced a more difficult question: Should she remain open to serve the families who needed her, putting herself, her staff, and the children she cared for at risk? Or should she simply close her doors?
The week of March 20, she had to make a call. Governor Tim Walz had asked providers to stay open to serve essential workers. All but two of the families DeVos serves are essential workers of some form or another. “I don’t know that I slept at all at night,” she said.
Read Full Article »