BOWIE, Md. — Running a daycare during a pandemic comes with added responsibility. It means constant cleaning, wearing masks and temperature checks for everyone throughout the day.
For Dana Miller, Director at Little Smiling Faces Daycare in Bowie, it also means financial stress.
"We're licensed for 72 and we only have 18 students here at this time, so we're operating in the negative," said Miller.
The pandemic forced her to close her second location in Upper Marlboro. It's unclear when she will be able to reopen that location. Miller says the Paycheck Protection Program loan she received at the start of the pandemic ran out after about eight weeks.
According to Miller, a GoFundMe created by parents is the only reason she's been able to stay open.
"Child care is the backbone of the economy. If there’s no child care centers for people to take their children, what are we going to do?" said Miller.
In Virginia, Happy Faces Daycare in Centreville also took a hit back in March.
"We went from about 68 kids to about 12. A lot of people just aren't searching for daycare right now and are trying to see how long they can stay home," said Director Jessica Roberts.
Currently, they are back up to 38 kids and in a better place financially, but things are still uncertain for so many other businesses.
Experts fear the industry struggling before the pandemic, is at risk of collapsing without significant help from Congress.
"COVID-19 has been devastating to child care providers," said Myra Jones Taylor, Chief Policy Officer at Zero to Three, an organization that focuses on child care and development.
"The crisis is layered on an existing child care crisis. Long before COVID we were trying to manage work and the critical early development of children on a very unstable childcare system," Taylor said.
Zero to Three is among several child advocacy groups calling for $50 billion in emergency stimulus funding to keep child care businesses afloat.
If the trend of struggling daycare centers continues, experts worry in the next year, there won't be any child care available when parents go back to work.
"There will be no child care programs in communities to get parents back to work. This is not a doomsday scenario, it is a very plausible scenario we could be looking at," said Taylor.
Here is the CDC guidance for child care programs that remain open.