Safety, Hiring, and Transparency Will Be Key to Success in Preschool and Childcare In the Post-Corona World

Most of our client preschools have been closed during the pandemic shutdowns across the country. In our conversations with our clients and other preschool and childcare groups, as well as conversations with parents, transparency and safety will be paramount to ensuring the success and future viability of the preschool industry.  That's why we are adding key features to our technology stack in order to address the concerns of parents and to facilitate even greater cost savings for our clients.  There will be concerns on multiple fronts from both providers and parents.  Parents are concerned about the safety of their children while in preschool and childcare, and providers are concerned with quality, safety, and having a profitable business.  All of these objectives are linked going forward.  We anticipate that there will not be a return to any pre-Corona normalcy until a proven vaccine or antibody therapy can be widely deployed which, at a minimum will take 12-36 months.  One possibility is that the subsidy rates paid by the states will increase tremendously in order to maintain social distancing, have a smaller census in preschools, and continue to make preschool available.  We can also look forward to greater accountability from parents and regulators.  Preschools will need the ability to provide instant records and to demonstrate in real-time that they are actively and consistently following safety protocols.   This is why we are adding a data streaming feature to our platform so that daily health checks and occupancy levels can be monitored by owners in real-time. Finally, it's time to think about how to make the worker pay much more competitive in preschool and childcare. We believe the childcare workers will not be broadly seeking to return to work until after July 25, 2020. This is because of the enhanced unemployment rate through the CARES Legislation that makes it less profitable for lower-wage workers to return to work.  Please continue to follow our blog and feel free to email questions or comments to jimshields@enrollsmart. Thank you.

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