May 3rd, 2020
Hello Sunshine Families,
- have teachers clean and disinfect surfaces/toys in the classrooms throughout the day
- conduct daily health checks for all students
- send sick children and staff home
- thoroughly clean the entire building by a professional cleaning crew daily
- encourage kids to regularly wash their hands regularly — we have sinks in each and every classroom
- Enhanced health checks, including temperature checks, for all staff and children prior to entering.
- Any staff/child with any COVID symptoms or fever will be asked to stay home until cleared by a doctor to return.
- We are opening up additional rooms in order to keep group sizes as small as possible.
- Rooms will include the same group of children each day.
- We have designated a room within the building for the purpose of isolating any child that starts to exhibit COVID symptoms until such time as when they can be picked up.
- All staff will be required to wear face masks. We have worked with a Brooklyn based manufacturer to produce 3-layer filtered masks for the staff. The face masks are made in white fabric and are a blank canvas for our teachers to decorate each mask.
- If so requested by the parents, their children will be encouraged to wear face masks. This applies only to children over 2 years of age. CDC recommends against face coverings for children under the age of 2.
- We will continue with curbside drop-off and pick-up in order to minimize the number of people coming into the building.
- In order to limit the number of staff that children come in contact with, we will:
- Avoid combining classrooms at any point in the day (including pickup and dropoff)
- Require teachers to take breaks/lunch outside the building to reduce congregation among the teachers
- Continue with reduced operating hours of 7:30a – 5:30p which allows us to avoid having two shifts of teachers in the classroom.
- We have upgraded our cleaning service. Our new vendor is able to offer additional cleaning services/technology. Our new vendor will be thoroughly cleaning and disinfecting the building daily.
- We have ordered and are awaiting the delivery of an advanced professional disinfecting system. The Clorox Total 360 Electrostatic System creates an atomized, electro-statically charged fine mist that allows the disinfecting solution to reach surfaces outside the line of sight, covering what conventional sprays may miss, providing complete 360-degree coverage. Not only will this system help us lower the risk from the coronavirus, but it will also help fight the spread of more pedestrian infections such as the common cold, the flu, norovirus, etc.
- Teachers will increase the frequency of surface and manipulative (toys) disinfection, especially high-touch surfaces. It has always been our practice (well before this crisis) to disinfect surfaces in the classroom throughout the day. We have stepped up the frequency of disinfection given the current health crisis.
- Toys that cannot be effectively disinfected will be removed from the classrooms.
- Limit any visitors to the building (such as vendors/contractors/etc) during operating hours. All visitors will be required to wear face masks.
In addition, we are looking at a number of additional safety measures/technology. Just to give you some examples, you might have seen in the news that the coronavirus is quite susceptible to UV light. UV disinfection is well-accepted in the medical field, but of course, you can’t just bombard people with powerful UV light. We are exploring the possibility of installing UV lights within the ductwork of our heating/cooling system. This would prevent any UV exposure for our children/staff but at the same time expose the air circulating within the building to the disinfecting effects of UV light. This would have health benefits for our children/staff well beyond the coronavirus. Similarly, it appears that higher humidity also helps inactivate the virus quicker. We are looking into adding whole-building humidification. Not only would this help with the coronavirus, but it will also make the building more comfortable for everyone, especially in the fall/winter months when the air tends to be very dry. These are just a couple of examples meant to give you a flavor of the kinds of things we are looking at and thinking through. While we cannot be certain when/if we can implement these improvements, we hope that you understand that we are exploring every avenue to make Sunshine Starts the absolute best when it comes to a safe environment for childcare. We will update you as we make progress with these, or any other upgrades we make to Sunshine Starts.
