Emergency Daycare Offered To Essential Workers During Coronavirus

NORTHERN VIRGINIA — Guidepost Montessori, a national network of schools that operates several schools in Northern Virginia, is offering a special daycare program to the children of essential workers during the coronavirus crisis. With schools closed across the D.C. area, Guidepost Montessori wants to ensure that essential workers have a safe place to take their children while they are at their jobs.

The special program, called Emergency Care for Essential Workers, has the capacity to serve children from eight weeks to 12 years old. Enrollment is open for qualifying families at Guidepost's facilities across Northern Virginia, which are offering childcare from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, with the option for extended hours based on local need.

“To successfully address this global pandemic, we inescapably rely on certain critical work forces, and these essential workers in turn rely on accessible, reliable, and pedagogically exceptional childcare for their own children,” Ray Girn, CEO of Higher Ground Education and founder of Guidepost Montessori, said in a statement. “Our country is and will increasingly be challenged by an emerging crisis in childcare capacity.”

The special Emergency Care for Essential Workers program kicked off a week ago at the Guidepost Montessori school at Chantilly. "The parents are really grateful to be able to have this opportunity," Nancy Kaplan, Head of School at the Guidepost Montessori at Chantilly, told Patch.

Before the program started last week, the school underwent an extra deep clean, including the areas of the school that will be used for the special program. Professional cleaners come in every day to follow up with the same cleaning regimen.

Kaplan said she meets each child outside the Chantilly school, takes their temperature and asks them how they are feeling. The teachers and children practice the proper social distancing protocol throughout the day. They also follow other rules like when to take off their shoes and put them back on.

The program at the Guidepost Montessori schools is open to children of essential workers who are already members of the school and children who are not a part of the school.

The Northern Virginia area has six Guidepost Montessori schools. In normal times, the Chantilly school has an enrollment of about 15o children.

"We recognize that the one of the biggest needs out there is childcare for the people who have to be working," Kaplan said. "What it means to be an essential worker is something that goes beyond your typical thought of that. It's anybody who has to work in order to have people get the things they need."

Even for people who work remotely, they may still qualify for the special childcare services because they need to get their work done. "You may need this and you may qualify for it and not realize it," she said.

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The Guidepost Montessori schools in Northern Virginia underwent a major transition nearly a year ago. Higher Ground Education Inc., a company based in Lake Forest California, acquired six LePort Montessori schools in Northern Virginia last June and turned them into Guidepost Montessori schools. There are about 50 Guidepost Montessori schools across the country.

Kaplan, who worked under the previous ownership, said she is thrilled with how the new owners have implemented a caring philosophy for the children.

"We are an oganization that feels intensely about wanting to do right by children and wanting to do right by families and we want to be able to take the philosophies of Montessori that have to do with a profound respect for the individual capabilities of a child and bring that out into the world in a huge way," Kaplan said.

At Guidepost Montessori at Broadlands in Ashburn, the school is prepared to welcome its first children under the Emergency Care for Essential Workers program. The school has the capacity to serve many children and is waiting for the enough parents to express interest before it starts up the program.

"Right now, childcare is in crisis mode," said James Rice, Head of School at Guidepost Montessori at Broadlands. Childcare is especially a "critical need" for the children of essential workers, he said in an interview with Patch.

Along with offering the emergency care, the Broadlands school has been providing virtual learning for its regular students since the coronavirus crisis began and is now accepting students for its Elementary Distance Learning Program. The Broadlands school also has rolled out an At-Home Care program where teachers can go to the home of a family that is willing to host other students.

For the emergency care program, the tuitition fees are already discounted. But if an essential worker needs help taking care of their children, Guidepost will see what type of additional accommodations it can make to help a family. Families interested in Guidepost Montessori's emergency care service should visit the school network's website.

The societal stresses caused by the coronavirus crisis are serving as a new "call to action" among educators, Rice said. "You don’t work in education if you don’t want to take care of the community," he said.

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