Dear Just Kids Families,

Greetings from home. We hope you continue to stay healthy and well during these trying times. We are heeding the Federal and State guidelines to help stop the surge in COVID-19 cases by remaining closed until Monday, May 4, 2020. This is an extremely difficult decision to make but our top priority is the safety of our students, staff and community. Everyone has been impacted by the pandemic, and we are certainly not alone in trying to keep optimistic in the face of this crisis. 

It’s difficult to lead our small family-owned business during this crisis, but we’ve always used our core values to guide us; Faith, Integrity, Kindness, Teamwork, Reliability. We have little control over the situation, and yet, we are responsible to see not only Just Kids, but more importantly, our employees and families come out the other side intact. 

A large part of acting with integrity for us is communicating transparently. We have always been so proud of our staff and have worked hard to prioritize their needs in order to retain them. We have top-notch staff, with a caring culture and environment of strong teamwork. During this crisis, it is more important than ever to maintain this. We are working hard to support our staff and keep their spirits up. We typically operate on small margins, and have always prioritized staff welfare over profits; nearly every dollar of our revenue goes back into operations – primarily staff benefits and morale – in order to keep our staff culture strong. 

We have frequent communication with leaders of the early childhood education industry and networking with owners and directors of centers around the country to share best practices and advice. Not only is every community different, but every center has its own approach to handling this crisis. Every childcare center has different priorities and resources available and we know that there is a wide range of tuition charges while centers are closed, with the majority of private centers charging around 75% weekly. Our goal is to keep staff off unemployment, as that would only represent a portion of their paycheck, and create a financial hardship for them as well as adding to the state’s burgeoning unemployment rolls. We are very aware of the financial impact on families. Therefore, we do not feel our families should be charged during our time of closure. This decision will impose a heavy financial burden on our business but we feel we should come together and help each other out.