While school is about to start, many parents with younger children still have to figure out how to get to and from daycare each morning.
Christine Hutto, a parent in Williamsburg, said she has had trouble planning her morning schedule because most daycare facilities don’t open until 7 a.m., which is when she has to be at work.
But all daycare facilities in the area, those times are set based on the daycare’s license, which is required by the state.
“I would say most childcare facilities operate on the same time,” said Janey Lisagor, owner of the Goddard School. “Each center you can get different times with different licenses.”
The Goddard School has locations in Williamsburg and York County which services children from 6 weeks to 10 years old. Lisagor said at any one time the school can have 100 different children of varying ages.
Lisagor said when a child is enrolled in their daycare program, they make sure parents are aware of the drop-off and pick-up times because those times can’t be changed. For the past 10 years, the school’s times have been drop-off from 8 to 9 a.m. and pick-up from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m.
She said many parents don’t have an issue with those times and often drop children off later and pick them up earlier than required.
In James City County’s Parks and Recreation department provides REC Connect as a year-round program for youth and teenagers during school breaks and after school. The program operates out of all nine Williamsburg-James City County elementary schools and serves about 1,500 students during the school year and 600 in the summer, said April Melton, operations manager for the department.
At the middle school level, students are taken to the county’s Recreation Center for afterschool programs but it is the parents that have to make sure their schedules fit the pick-up times.
Melton said to plan the best times for the pick-up and drop-off, the program sends a survey to parents each year and plans a schedule based on responses.
But for parents like Hutto, that can be difficult.
“There might be some that fit outside those times, but we look at the majority,” Melton said. “We have to look at all 10 sites and trends.”
When planning pick-up and drop-off times, Melton said the program also tries to look at the schools’ schedules to best devise a timetable.
That doesn’t include all parents’ schedule, and at the Goddard School Lisagor said in the past parents have pulled together a carpool in order to work with each other’s schedules. However, she said she doesn’t have a carpool running currently and it can be difficult to organize one because any person who picks up a child has to be pre-approved by the school.
If there are issues Lisagor said they try to work with the parents to come up with a solution.
But as parents try to manage their schedules with school starting again, Melton said sometimes the simplest solution might be reaching out to a friend or family member for help.
