The much-awaited New Year is here, the world is starting to slowly re-open and now that college students are being allowed back to school. 

That begs the question, what are these students with children doing? What are they doing to balance school and the care of their children? And what are daycares doing to adjust to the new restrictions?  

In an interview with Lisa Hollen, the center manager of SFCC’s Early Learning Center, she identified all of the changes the daycare has had to make.  

“Our preschool classrooms that typically run with 19 children in each room were reduced to a maximum of 10 children per classroom due to covid,” Hollen said. “Preschool rooms have individual sets of supplies so we limit cross contamination. Staff wear [masks all] the time, and do their best to maintain 6 feet apart from other staff members.Parents no longer enter the building, they drop their children off at the outside entrance of the classroom.  This helps limit the amount of potential covid exposure inside the building. We have shortened hours at the beginning and end of each day for extra cleaning and sanitizing. Our hours were reduced from 7-4:30 to 7:30-4pm.”  

The early learning center is located on SFCC’s campus and they describe the daycare as such. 

“Your children benefit from our early learning center also serving as an SFCC learning laboratory site for our students studying early childhood education,” their website said. “Early Head Start for children from one year to three years of age. Head Start pre-school for children three to five years of age.”

Most everyone has had struggles with online school, but for mother and SFCC student, Rachel Gordon has had to juggle her schoolwork, her son’s school schedule and working, which is quite a handful.  

“The most difficult part was keeping him interested in his school work, but still keeping up with my own work,“ Gordon said. “I also work, and that made it even more challenging. A benefit was that since my platform is online, I was able to be an example to him of how to do it [online classes]. I fit school in when I can…I was often up late as it was the only time I had available for my school.” 

Gordon is a perfect example of many parents currently enrolled who manage their time to focus on her child, but also manage to balance their own school and jobs.