ASHWAUBENON (NBC 26) — As more people are receiving their Covid-19 vaccinations and heading back into the office, many might be wondering what the future of child care is looking like.
As parents are beginning to look for child care options, many might find that a lot of these child care centers have a waiting list.
For one area child care center, Kidz in Motion in Ashwaubenon says they have a waiting list up until December.
The director of the center says right now they are at full capacity with 85 children enrolled and 20 staff members.
They say they could hold up to 100 children on site, but due to staffing shortages, they aren’t able to do so.
“But if we were able to get more staff, we could move up that waiting list to probably September or August,” said Sally Van Rens, Director of Kidz in Motion Child Care Center.
Van Rens says they often have many new families calling and the reality she says is that there’s an infant and toddler shortage in the area.
“In this area specifically there’s an infant and toddler shortage. I know a lot of other centers have closed their infant and toddler rooms due to shortage of staffing,” Van Rens said.
She says one of the reasons why this is the case is because you can only have four infants with one teacher. Meanwhile, in a preschool class, for example, you can have ten children with one teacher.
"An infant room in a childcare center to keep them open when you are short staffed and short with children isn't cost effective," Van Rens said. "So a lot of others centers have closed. We've decided to keep it open because those are the families that have been with us for a long time."
Currently, Kidz in Motion says they have 16 infants and two different toddler rooms.
One of the rooms is for those babies that aren’t moving or crawling yet; meanwhile, the other room is for the ones who are beginning to crawl and learning how to walk.
For one parent of a one-year-old, he says he’s been bringing his son to this child care center for more than a year now.
“We worked pretty much through the whole pandemic so he was at daycare the whole time,” said Philip Burdick.
Kidz in Motion did not close during the pandemic.
Van Rens said they decided to keep their doors open in order to make it accessible for families who still had to work.
Burdick said the only challenging part for his son, Maverick, was getting used to face coverings at a young age.
"It's been weird with the whole Covid thing. He's not quite used to the mask but it's taken some used to," Burdick said.
