I had a blind spot.
I wear a mask all day at work, we require our customers to do so too, and we control the entry to the store to keep capacity low. We only see my mom outdoors, and with masks on. We’ve cancelled every trip, even Elkhart Lake because the hotel didn’t have a mask policy for guests. We haven’t set foot in a store or a restaurant since March. Paulie is working from home indefinitely. Viv’s two-week day camp doesn’t allow contact with parents, requires masks when indoors (yes for the kids too), does temperature checks and screening. Viv’s regular summer daycare has the same tight procedures—no parents in the building, masks, no crossover with groups of kids, temperature checks and screening.
Charlie.
Charlies daycare, which we started back five weeks ago, just didn’t ramp up the way I expected. Their occupancy when we started was super low, and I saw masks on about half the parents. When I saw an unmasked parent, I just waited in the car to time my pick up or drop off after they exited. They had hand sanitizing stations, closed early for daily cleaning, and a list of covid protocols that included social distancing, no room crossing, etc.
But the two biggies—controlling entry in the building and masks. On those they seemed to drag their feet. I kept nudging; I asked, I wrote. When I sent a list of my concerns, especially compared to the two other centers we experienced doing it better, they only made the two smallest changes on my list. They buried their response to the mask question in a technical non-answer four paragraphs down. As the numbers continued to rise these last two weeks my gut said something isn’t right.
But my heart.
My heart just didn’t want it to be true. My heart kept saying:
We love Miss V. Charlie loves Miss V.
I want him to have that same experience in her room that Viv had.
We love Miss K and Miss C and Miss A. They know him, they care about him. They know his stubbornness and laugh at his silliness. And Miss S! Miss S who recorded story time EVERY DAY for weeks during shut down!
He needs the interaction, he needs to see his playmates.
He’s so much better since he’s been back! Behavior, attitude, resiliency!
He’s so much happier and energetic.
He loves his playmates, he talks about them all the time and is so happy to see them every morning.
He needs the routine.
I don’t want to abandon my friends. My co-parents. (Daycare providers are our co-parents.)
I kept thinking, maybe just need more time to get it, they will see the writing on the wall with the numbers. Maybe they have good reasons, maybe I just don’t understand, maybe there’s something they know that I don’t? (about daycare regulations). These people take care of my family. They are part of my family structure. They are trusted. But, but...why is the director not wearing a mask? Why is the owner dodging my questions?
The day that we finally said, nope, they have to adopt masks or we will pull him out, the day that we had finally decided was our deadline, was the literal day that they had a teacher test positive. One of Charlie’s teachers.
As I communicated more these past two distressing days with other parents and teachers, it became clear that we were not alone in our concerns. And that we had been misled. They had not been truthful when I asked if other parents had concerns. It is clear they had no intention of ever adopting a mandatory mask policy. In fact, in the days just prior to the positive case, they had received an exception to the City of Milwaukee mask mandate that they had ACTIVELY APPLIED FOR.
When we picked Charlie up, in total crisis mode, I asked the OWNER of the center, “Why no masks!?”
She replied “Well, we encourage masks”, as she handed me the Close Contact Exposure notice from the health department
”Will you make them mandatory now? Now that you HAVE A POSITIVE CASE? They reduce transmission!” I screamed, unable to contain my rage.
”Well, it depends what you read, not everyone believes...” Believes. That word.
This is the insidious danger. This woman, who controls the livelihoods of 20+ people, who had power over the well-being of 40+ families and children, doesn’t BELIEVE in masks.
And that failure to understand science, that failure to trust experts, that failure to see your community and employees and clients as worth taking extra precautions for, that failure to see your organization as part of the larger fabric of society has broken our lives.
And our hearts.
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(7/21 Update and Clarification: they applied for an exception to the City of Milwaukee mask mandate for children age 3. They complied with the City of Milwaukee ordinance for adults (staff, teachers, parents) to wear masks IN ONLY THEIR LOCATION THAT FELL UNDER THAT ORDINANCE. They did not apply that same protocol to their other locations, because, as they repeated in two emails and a phone call, our location's municipality did not have an ordinance).