KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Kids may celebrate when they get a snow day, but the same news could leave Mom and Dad panicking.
"I did not prepare for this," Eddis Jackson said on Monday.
She was hoping that because it snowed on Sunday, school would be open on Monday. But that wasn't the case: Many school districts in the Kansas City metro elected to cancel school following the snowstorm.
Child care on snow days can be scarce. Day cares and community programs may be closed, too. What options do parents have then?
"It's very frustrating because I still work a full-time job,” Jackson said. “So it's very frustrating when you're without day care. It means you have to use unplanned vacation days.”
Finding a babysitter is tough for Jackson because everyone she knows also has to work and pay the bills.
She gets vacation days at her job, but by this time of year, she’s used almost all of them. On Monday, she had to stay home with her foster kids.
"It puts a really hard burden on parents," Jackson said.
On the Kansas side of the metro, the YMCA is an option for those days.
"Sometimes school districts close because the weather is cold. There are wind chill factors and waiting at the bus stop concerns,” said Steven Scraggs with the YMCA of Greater Kansas City. “On those days we'll see our numbers go way up.”
Parents can register their children that day and drop them off at a participating school in the Shawnee Mission and Blue Valley school districts. It costs $25.
"We really do a lot with students to provide them with academic focus, homework help and even social emotional learning, and opportunities to grow as a person," Scraggs said.
But many parents like Jackson hope a conversation to expand child care programs as a whole — not just on snow days — happens sometime in the future.
"Just being aware that people are trying to work, a lot of low-income people as well are trying to work and they're not able to go when they don't have anyone to watch their children," Jackson said.
A report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services says there is a direct link between states spending more money on child care services and the employment rate going up, especially with low-income mothers. It says if subsidies were tripled, 652,000 women with children under 13 years old would be newly employed.
