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Description

Gloria is back and ready to tackle America’s child care crisis head-on. To kick off season 2, she calls up Lauren Cook, CEO of Ellis Early Learning in Boston. We met Lauren back in season 1, where she walked us through the nitty gritty of how much it costs to operate a child care center. This time around, Lauren tears up as she talks about how nationwide labor shortages are reverberating through the child care system, what she has to do to keep the lights on at Ellis, and how the ongoing pandemic has made a bad situation continue to get worse.

This podcast is presented by Neighborhood Villages, and is brought to you with generous support from Imaginable Futures, Care For All Children by the David and Laura Merage Foundation, and Spring Point Partners.

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Transcript

SPEAKERS

Gloria Riviera, Lauren Cook, Shane Dunn

Gloria Riviera  00:29

It is Wednesday. My husband has been in Ukraine since Saturday, I’ve been running the show solo. Oh, yes. I’m on time to get my oldest son from Play practice. That is a small miracle. What can I tell you, went to the hospital with my other son today found out we have to have another surgery. I’m keeping it together trying to you know, like all parents and caregivers trying to work and give care. That’s the deal. Couple full time jobs going on. Hi, guys, it’s Gloria. So that was me giving you a little look at how my week my adventures in parenting we’re going, you know, so-so. But what I really want to say is, how’s it going with you? What’s going on? How’s your childcare situation? Over there? Where you live? Still a little bit hectic? Yeah? Some coziness? Yeah? Some sleepless nights, likely. Some frenzied mornings, check. A little bit of snack time, dinner time, bath time. You know what, how is the grocery shopping going? Do they have those fire engine or pink taxi cards in your grocery store? You know the ones you put your kid in that front part. And then there’s the normal cart behind it. So basically, it’s like the size of a Cadillac. My daughter loves those things. But how are you supposed to do a 180-degree turn? That is my question with one of those things. I guess each aisle is just a one-way street, which is kind of like how parenting can feel sometimes, it can be like pushing a mack truck, right? Especially if you don’t have enough help or any help. Speaking of how is your childcare situation? Awesome, right? Seamless, easy, affordable. Teachers who are supported enough to provide sanctity and stability for your little one and sanity for you? No? Didn’t think so. How did I know? Because childcare and early education in this country is by and large a hot mess. That is what we looked at in season one of No One Is Coming To Save Us. We dove deep. I learned so much. I laughed. I cried. Actually in reverse order. First I cried. Then I laughed. But I left empowered. I left asking myself, okay, what are we going to do about this?

Gloria Riviera  03:19

Because I do think that together, we actually can make this system better. This is Season Two of No One Is Coming To Save Us, from Lemonada Media. I’m Gloria Riviera. I have reported all over the world for ABC News covering everything from wars to natural disasters. I live in DC with my husband, also a journalist and my three kids, Tristan, Caden, and Sinclair. And last year, I dipped my toes into the podcasting world and went on a mission to uncover everything that is wrong in our country’s broken childcare system. And well, that system is very much still broken. And so we’re back. And this time, we are a weekly show. Can you believe it? I know, me neither. I’m a little nervous. I’m more than a little excited. My daughter would say I’m nervous sided. I guess the nerves come from, well, they come from really wanting to get this right. Because this is our moment to make a change to the child care system once and for all. Well, it’s rough right now. There is hope. And I want to make sure we all keep that in mind. There is hope. Don’t forget that. Okay. That is why we do this whole thing raise up little humans, because we have hope. I’m so happy to be here. Thank you for letting me lead this conversation. I’m going to listen a lot and ask very elementary questions so that I understand it and help you understand it. And along the way, we are going to make a battle plan. Are you in? You better be in because I am not doing this alone. Okay? Let’s do this.

Gloria Riviera  05:02

We are about to hear from Lauren Cook, the CEO of Ellis Early Learning, a child care center in Boston south end. We spoke with her briefly in season one, which I highly, highly recommend you go back and listen to if you haven’t already. Ellis, where Lauren works is a really special place. They are nationally accredited. They have a level three quality rating and Massachusetts. That is really good. But what makes Ellis really special is that they are truly diverse in every sense of the word. They take care of a lot of different children from a lot of different backgrounds. Parents will do whatever they can to get their kid a spot at Ellis. As Lauren will tell you in the interview, they currently have 621 children on their waitlist. But in spite of that, she was still up against a lot. The last time we spoke.

Lauren Cook 

You need many teachers for a few students because obviously the younger the child is the more care they need. Elementary kids can go to the bathroom themselves. They don’t need help with diapers, they don’t need help feeding themselves, we have more people to pay. So there’s just more salaries first and foremost that we feed our kids breakfast, lunch and a snack every day you have diapers for love. Example paper, when you go to the doctor’s office and you sit on the table, that’s administrative staff, we own a bus. So we’re in the transportation business, have the mortgages, there’s always a leak. There’s always something expensive, like our H-VAC system broken one of our buildings last year, it costs $480,000 to fix it, everything about it is expensive.

Gloria Riviera  06:36

If you’ve been sending your kids to daycare or trying to during the pandemic, you know what a disaster that’s been. Now imagine trying to run a child care facility. That’s what Lauren’s been doing. Plus, did I mention, she’s also the mom of two young girls. So she is living all of it every single day in every single way. And that is no small task. But that’s enough of me. Let’s hear how it’s been going from Lauren herself. Lauren, it’s so good to see you. Thank you for doing this. I feel so lucky to get this much time from you. And what I know is like always a crazy day.

Lauren Cook 

Oh, it’s crazy. But it’s my pleasure to be here. So nice to see you.

Gloria Riviera 

And I want to start with something a little bit, you know, that starts at home, which is when you woke up this morning. Do you remember what your first thought was about the day ahead?

Lauren Cook 

Honestly, I think it was oh, shoot. I forgot. I can’t remember what’s on my calendar today. And I need to check it because I don’t know what’s in store. Yeah, it was cuz normally I have my next day like fresh in terms of what to expect. What’s actually documented is what will be the day but I didn’t even have that front of mine. And I don’t know why. So I think it was a better check my calendar.

Gloria Riviera 

And how much time is it between, you know, when you wake up and when you get to Ellis? And what happens in that space of time?

Lauren Cook  08:05

Oh, sure. So I have two young children. And my husband is a public-school teacher in a different city. So he leaves the house around 630 In the morning, so I solo parent, my two girls every morning. So you know, it’s the full morning routine of parenting. And that happens is as early as my kids wake up. So sometimes it’s 5:30. Today, I was lucky it was like 6:10. So it’s just the typical routine of you know, getting them dressed, feeding them, getting the lunches ready, getting organized, getting out the door in order to drop off my five-year-old at school. And then fortunately, my little one, my one-year-old comes to Ellis with me. So we continue on our journey. But I often check my email at red lights. And sadly, this morning, I received a really upsetting email from a wonderful staff person at LSU, who actually works in our school age program. And we’ve had a really hard time staffing that just like early ed. It’s a licensed program for kids five and up. And she basically was like, I can’t do it anymore. I’m going to start looking for jobs tomorrow. And because we haven’t there’s a just like a desert of being able to find candidates.

Gloria Riviera 

Then you’re reading that at a red light with your daughter in the car headed to work.

Lauren Cook 

Yes. And I’m like a big like thinking a lot of swear words because we can’t afford to lose like retention is so important. We can’t afford to lose anyone else because we have such a high number of vacancies as it is. So the thought of losing someone that’s really good thought of losing anyone, even if they’re not gold star is really hard. So I immediately called my colleague and I was what are we going to do, what is our plan here? We need she needs to feel immediately supported. We need to come up with strategies, like she should not be leaving. What are the tools that we can pull out to make this not happen.

Gloria Riviera  10:08

Collide all the steps. And what were her reasons has she brought this up before? Why are people leaving right now?

Lauren Cook 

She has, well, she’s leaving because she’s the only one in her program. So we haven’t been able to she’s literally all by herself. But our early ed program is suffering significantly too. So we need coverage in those classrooms. So we’re literally running out of human beings to have a physical presence in these classrooms. So the admin team is regularly at the front desk, in classrooms in school age and early ed. It’s like deploy all of our forces.

Gloria Riviera 

When you say in, they’re consumed with figuring this out, or they’re actually at the front desk in the classrooms, admin staff. Nodding your head physically in the classroom.

Lauren Cook

Physically in the classrooms, physically at the front desk, physically anywhere we need them to be. And we have this other location. It’s about a 15-minute drive from Ellis and the south end, I got a text from our assistant VP of programs this morning. She said, Good morning, I want to go to JP today because they need help. And that’s our assistant VP of programs. So she just wanted to let me know she wasn’t going to be at Ellis in the south end, because we didn’t have enough staff in JP. So it’s, there’s just we’re desperate or like paying. I was like, we’ll pay all the money, like how much does it cost to advertise? We need to do that like, and what do we need to do to keep our people that are here? So I pulled my finance guy into here. And I was like, what? Run the numbers? Like, what if we give everyone $1 more an hour? What if we do bonuses again, what if we like, catered breakfast for the first day of spring? But like, really nothing makes up for having a really hard work experience day after day after day. Right? Like, so money doesn’t fix that. Yes, everyone deserves money. And they’ve earned it but don’t receive it. If that makes sense. But you still want your job to be a place you want to go, and not so stressful and exhausting. And I don’t have a fix for that unless we get more people hired. And the pipeline is dry, it’s empty.

Gloria Riviera  12:22

When we first spoke to for season one, things were not great. We were coming off of Gosh, I don’t remember how many months but a significant number of months of COVID. Let’s see, that was the spring of 2021. Right, like March or April. So it was about a year. And now we’re heading into the you know, I mean, within days we’ll be in year three of COVID here in the States. What has changed in that second year? How did Omicron affect things?

Lauren Cook 

Omicron made it so much harder.

Gloria Riviera 

I mean, harder from a horrible place, right?

Lauren Cook 

Yeah, I’m like a little, I just, it’s been rough. We’ve had a couple of hard days. And we also lost a wonderful staff person on Friday, who just, she felt totally burned out and felt like she was in the classroom covering too much. And that wasn’t the role she was hired for. So it’s been a couple of hard days. So when you have to deal with COVID, actual COVID cases beyond trying to prevent COVID. It is a considerable amount of work. Every positive case, it’s contact tracing. It’s communication, it’s making sure families know what they need to do. It’s getting our facts straight. Every case is different. And it’s like, oh, when was the exposure and when was the exposure if the classmate was there on Thursday, but not Friday, it’s a lot of feels like math, like it’s a lot of counting, and making sure you’re giving people correct information. And when if now we have a test and stay model, which is wonderful because the state has provided rapid test thanks to neighborhood villages, which is awesome. And we need to if we’re providing five days of testing for a cohort, or are a certain amount of testing for someone who’s symptomatic, like we just have to pay attention and we have to make sure that the kids who needs the test, get the test. We have 22 classrooms and we have no staff. So who’s going to be the person who is making sure that Johnny gets rapid tested today, and that Evelyn comes back from isolation because she had COVID and she comes back tomorrow and that’s fine. We can let her in because she’s good.

Gloria Riviera  14:55

It’s a full-time job. I mean, it’s a full-time logistical challenge. And 24-hour day job.

Lauren Cook 

So Omicron just intensified, because there were so much COVID, so many cases, so much tracking so much tracing. It’s so much better. Now we are really seeing a dip in the numbers for the past few weeks, we’ve had negative pools at Ellis, which is amazing.

Gloria Riviera 

Negative pools are when you do testing, nobody has it?

Lauren Cook 

Right. Like, hadn’t happened for a really long time. And we also had been closed for a number of days during February because we had to do some rehabilitation work at Ellis. And we tested everyone via rapid two and up on Monday when we came back. Those were all negative too. I’m like afraid to say it too loud. I don’t want to jinx it. But hopefully, things at this moment feel better. But then we know from Delta, we know from Omicron, you can’t get too comfortable. Who knows what’s next? But it would feel more celebratory if we had staff and people like we just are losing actually my daughter’s wonderful toddler teacher is leaving because she got into grad school. And she’s going to be going to graduate school, which is so wonderful for her. But we’re all like dying, because she’s great. And now what are we going to do? And so we’re just like, we need to form relationships with high schools. We need to get high school seniors in year after school. And we need them all day April break, and we need them all summer. Because who else are we going to hire?

Gloria Riviera  16:56

And why do you think there is such a dearth of potential employees? I don’t understand the disconnect between universities offering degrees in early childcare, and this lack of applicant pool candidates.

Lauren Cook 

There’s less interest in that career track in that education track at schools, I think the word is out, you make no money and the job is really hard. So I think programs are less popular. And we do know from educator like University organizations in our area that are seeing fewer people in their programs. So there are fewer graduates who are even interested to work in the field. But I think in general, we don’t have levers we can pull like our competitors can. And even my doctor’s office, I took my kid to the pediatrician. And I was like, You guys forgot to call me to remind me because that’s like a really important call, you know, you know what it’s like, you want that call to remember? And they were like, oh, yeah, we have no staff. We’re short staffed with nurses. We’re short staffed with receptionist, people don’t want to work on the frontlines of pandemic, it was like, oh my gosh, this is even a private practice Medical Center that is having trouble. But Ellis doesn’t have levers like Amazon does, or Costco does or Target, the Target in my neighborhood, which is just minutes away from Ellis in JP paying $24 an hour for their regular, for their cashier people.

Gloria Riviera  18:33

That’s since COVID? $24 an hour.

Lauren Cook 

So and then you’re not. It’s so much easier than early childhood working at Target. So these companies have levers, like better benefits, higher wages that they cannot, what can we do? We can’t even offer more vacation time because we can’t afford for the people to go on vacation. So it’s such a hard sell. And when you look at the public school system with teachers making actual livable wages and getting summers off and getting school vacations off a paraprofessional, which is like the assistant to teachers in the Boston Public School District. They make $24 an hour.

Gloria Riviera 

And how much are you paying? How much are you paying right now? What’s the range?

Lauren Cook 

Between $16 and $24 an hour and then $24 an hour are people with experience and with bachelor’s degrees. And you don’t need a bachelor degree to work at Target.

Gloria Riviera 

No, you don’t. So when these people leave, do you feel it’s burnout that they just cannot do it anymore? It’s I feel like even though this is just season two, my recollection from season one is that a few people would leave consistently for higher paying jobs that yes or not as did not demand as much as being an early educator does, you know driving a bus or these, any kind of job with benefits really would take them out of a place like Ellis is that just intensified 10-fold, 100-fold?

Lauren Cook  20:22

Yes, because I think when you’re enduring a work environment where you don’t have sufficient support, so they don’t even they don’t have sufficient support from their colleagues from teaching partners, right, because they might not have a consistent teaching partner. So you have these well, meaning like administrators, like the people, like my colleague, Julia, who’s our communications manager, who’s going into a different classroom every day to try to be helpful, that teacher has to then spend a lot of time bringing Julia up to speed on like, this child and that child and this routine. And that happens every single day, with the well-meaning person that’s going into help to try to keep the classroom open. So that poor teacher is not only trying to support their students, and make sure that they have an enriching, educational, developmentally appropriate, nurturing, loving, wonderful experience, they’re also having to train this practical volunteer that’s next to them. That’s exhausting. And that’s really hard. And how do you get good momentum in your day-to-day work experience. So I just think it’s just exhausting for the people who are here. And it’s really depleting and it’s really hard to not feel like you have, you’re set up for success in your classroom with your teaching team, but also, their supervisors are in classrooms. So our infant and toddler educational, are our directors of education for infants and toddlers, for example, or other directors that we have program leadership, they’re in classrooms providing coverage, so they’re not being able to provide the support, and the guidance that is needed to really feel like you are taken care of in your workplace.

Gloria Riviera  22:08

It sounds like you see it, you have a good grasp and apply it to any business, right? Stability, feeling supported. Feeling like there is a path up from where you are feeling, you know, the happiness that you see in these families saying thank you for being here. I love that just seems to have been shredded by COVID, even though it was already in such a tough place.

Lauren Cook 

Exactly. I think that’s really important point. It’s not like it’s was once great. And now it’s horrible. It was once bad. And now it’s horrible. Right?

Gloria Riviera 

So how are you making it all work? What is your? I mean, do you still have a waitlist? How is the fundraising going? I mean, how do you get through each day, especially when you’re reading texts at traffic lights that make you want to burst into tears?

Lauren Cook 

Yes. So every day is survival mode. And I can’t claim to like bear the burden. It’s really our program leadership that does that every morning. They’re like trying to figure out triage, and how are we going, who’s going to be in this classroom who’s going to be in that who’s gonna cover breaks, and that’s really stressful. And that’s from the moment they wake up. So we really do the best we can and but it’s not ideal. Fortunately, we’re working really hard in all areas, and I have a wonderful person and advancement who just she works around the clock, I’m not even kidding. Our VP of advancement, she’ll get called into a classroom or to cover the front desk, and she’ll be online at 10 or 11 o’clock at night, working, working, working, trying to figure out who can we meet, who can we get a meeting with? She just doesn’t turn off and I have to feel it. Please like work life balance. It’s fairly important. You have to be mindful of burnout for yourself. But because we’re working so hard, and she’s very inspiring, we’re knocking on every door we’re saying, who can we meet? See is like, Ellis is doing very important work with a very unique model. We’re making the city better place; we should be replicated. We want people to copy us, this is what good looks like, right? Like high quality, integrated, early childhood education. In a wonderfully diverse setting is like that’s what we need more of in this world. So we’ve been having some success. And I’m telling you I’m like dusting off cobwebs of relationships, I reached out to a friend from like third grade, who’s now a CEO of like, a major corporation that’s publicly traded that I haven’t seen in like 10 years, I was at a wedding with him. And I was like, Connor, hi, can I tell you what I’ve been up to lately? Like, let’s just, I’m doing what I have to do. We’re all doing what we have to do. But he took that meeting, and he was gracious enough to learn about Ellis and He’s based in New York, but they have business in Boston and we were fortunate enough to be featured on CBS national news on January 31st.

Lauren Cook 

And it’s a two-minute segment. And they did such a beautiful job just encapsulating what Ellis is all about and the struggle of how the high cost of childcare nationally and the negative impact that has on families with young children. And they also weave in how Alice is special, and it’s two minutes, and it gives us instant credibility. So I’m able to share that. And my friend Connor, his company just wrote us a $10,000 check yesterday.

Gloria Riviera 

Yay, good.

Lauren Cook 

So it’s just things like that and trying to get more luncheon learns. So Boston has like a wonderful corporate life here, right? We have lots of headquarters are here and really successful companies and really successful people. And we’re like, can we tell the Ellis story at a luncheon learn? Can we just get out there, please. So we’re making more relationships. And we’re trying to get the name out there and raise our profile. And slowly but surely, we’re raising more money, which is great, but I describe it as a sprint and a marathon. So we have $1.4 million, that we need to raise this year to meet our operating goal. Just to keep the lights on and pay people what we said we’re going to pay and it’s crazy in the nonprofit sector, you spend money when you don’t have it, you have to raise it. And so we’re sprinting to the end of our fiscal year, which is the end of June to raise that 1.4, then we have a marathon that like we don’t want it to be this hard next year. We need to develop more relationships, have a broader donor base, and bring in more support and, and have people understand that we really need annual support, regular giving, it can’t be one off, because how are we, it’s just so much or too few people to like find all the people to give us one gift one year, and then never again. And then also it’s very hard to raise $1.4 million at a time.

Gloria Riviera  27:19

Even $10,000 against, 1.4. I mean, it’s great, but you need more.

Lauren Cook 

Totally. And we have very few significant donors in Ellis we consider on anyone over $5,000, we’re like doing cart cartwheels down the hallways here. And that’s not true for all nonprofits with bigger brand recognition, they get significant gifts. And that’s we’re just trying to work towards. And we know that though the worthy, the work is worthy, the mission is worthy, our team is worthy. Because we really want to bring in a lot more money so we can pay them what they’re worth. And that’s part of the marathon. And then obviously advocacy is so important and continuing to, to plead with the government invest in early childhood, like they do in K to 12. Because that’s the long-term solution here is we still need the government to step up and, and recognize and invest in this sector. Because the science is so clear about why it’s so important.

Gloria Riviera  28:17

How did you use what the government gave during COVID when the money went out? Did it get to you and how did you use it?

Lauren Cook 

Yes. And it’s still getting to us. And I actually just had a meeting with our finance person today about it. So we’ve done bonuses, and we also raise salaries. So remember, I share that our rates are hourly wages ranged between $16 to $24. Before that government investment, we were paying between $15 and $21.

Gloria Riviera 

Okay, so that’s a change for the better. Yeah, when you look back at COVID, I guess we’re two years in, how many times did Ellis receive government funding?

Lauren Cook 

It’s coming in different ways. So we got like a check every month. But that didn’t launch until I don’t remember when it started. But maybe like six months ago.

Gloria Riviera 

So recently, yeah.

Lauren Cook 

Yes. And then we also received some unexpected stabilization money that came in one big chunk. And that was recent. And then we were told that we should be getting about a third of that money again, which was unexpected money. So now I’m just mapping out with my favorite finance person, I was like, okay, tell me what’s going to happen if we raise that salary range from $16 to $24, to $17 to $25. And then what if all of our program leaders get a $2,500 boost? Because we’ll die if they leave. And then what if our people who are really struggling and always providing coverage, what if they get 1000? And it’s like, right now we can totally do it because we have kind of this facet of government help. What if it turns off? Like, the commitment right now. So the government, the governor just proposed to the legislature to extend this help for another year through fiscal 23, which is amazing. And I’m hopeful that the legislature will approve it, because they tend to be very supportive of early childhood and Massachusetts, which is great. So that’s great. So we have like a year of this, that I could be not sweating bullets over raising the ranges, right? But then what happens after that? Or what if, God forbid, like, what if Biden isn’t re-elected? Or what if there’s a different federal leadership in a few years? And we don’t know who’s going to be governor next in Massachusetts. So there’s just a lot of unknown that makes me nervous to be on the hook for having to raise a lot more money if the government’s not going to continue to help.

Gloria Riviera 

What is the parent community interest right now? Or what kind of things are you hearing from them? Is there still a waitlist at Ellis?

Lauren Cook 

Oh, yes, we have. Last time I checked, which was a couple of weeks ago, because I had to update our like overview page, 621 children

Gloria Riviera 

On the waitlist? 621 children on the waitlist? For how many spots overall at your location?

Lauren Cook 

We’re licensed to serve. And this was just early education waitlist. So this was infants, toddlers, preschoolers, and I think our current capacity is 239 kids here?

Gloria Riviera

Wow, that’s a huge number. So is your sense that parents are seeing sort of the frayed edges every day, but they’re still cognizant of what a special place it is for their child?

Lauren Cook  32:05

Yeah, I think I mean, you should, you wouldn’t know if you are here, right now, we could go downstairs and we’ll see classrooms of like bouncing babies, giggling and smiling and eating and reading. And it’s just like the most joyful place and our teachers do a spectacular job creating a wonderful environment for these kids. And they experience such joy, that I think that the parents are really pleased about that. And for parents who believe in community setting for early childhood education versus like a nanny, you can’t you can’t replicate that at home, even with our frayed edges, even if they realize, Oh, we’re not we’re not sure who that second teacher is in there today. We’ve never met that person. But they seem nice. Like, I think they just kind of there. They give us grace and understanding. And then and we try to be very honest with them about the challenges in the sector right now. And they decide that the benefit outweighs the challenges, the benefits outweigh the challenges that we have.

Gloria Riviera 

After this whole conversation about how insanely challenging the situation has been for Ellis. I do like to end and I sense in you that this won’t be a hard ask. I do like to end on what brings you hope, you know, in your job every day. I know that you guys have lost great people before. And do you know that it’s a cycle? Is it? Are you going to find someone great, like what keeps you going?

Lauren Cook 

We have a tremendous team here. So the people like we have people who’ve been here over 20 years, over 15 years, over 10 years, and they are now our program leadership for the most part. And they are so deeply committed to Ellison to the children that I know that our foundation is really strong. And our teachers who are here that have been here for a while or just or who haven’t. But our excellent teachers, they bring so much love and radiate Joy despite the challenges despite the anxiety despite the stress. So you have to remember that like just all of this difficult stuff is hidden from the children. And what makes Ellis so magical and so special and so powerful, are the children and that is just, it generates joy. It generates hope, it generates excitement. You see them grow before your eyes, you see them learn new things, you hear them talk it’s just like That’s why all of this is worth it. It is why Ellis is the best possible place. It’s why I adore my job, also people who dedicate their career to early childhood, despite making no money, despite it being so hard, are incredibly special people, wonderful, talented. Their heart is just like they are not regular people off the street, right? They’re just special people. And we get to be around them. And I get to work with them. And who gets to say that about colleagues, you know, that you would be surrounded by like, truly special gifted people who are so selfless, so loving. It’s like a lovely place to be in work.

Gloria Riviera 

Despite your very long, very stressful to do list, that’s saying quite a lot.

Lauren Cook 

It’s so true.

Gloria Riviera 

People could see your face because your whole demeanor just changed when I asked you that question. And it was just very obvious.

Lauren Cook 

It’s great. It’s such a happy place.

Gloria Riviera  36:01

Yeah. Well, Lauren, thank you so much for speaking to us.

Lauren Cook 

Thank you so much.

Gloria Riviera 

That’s Lauren. Wow, right? Rockstar, I learned so much. I really hadn’t taken in what it must be like, not only as the CEO to learn, you’re losing an amazing employee, but as a mom, and what that kind of change and instability does to the kids. Well, we’ve heard how this crisis is impacting the people running childcare centers. Now we’re going to take a look at how those challenges trickle down throughout the system, and how they impact the parents, children and teachers that go through it every day.

Shane Dunn 

First of all, weighs on me is vaccines again, unfortunately, we have now had COVID in our house, but which we got there two years. Thankfully, and now we have it. But I want the vaccine to be available. I know parents, there’s a range of feelings on the scale. We certainly get about children. Starting, that’s number one.

Gloria Riviera

that was Shane Dunn on a parent at Ellis early learning and his four-year-old son Liam, showing us just how hard it is to be a working parent right now. In part two of this episode, we’re going to hear from two more people we met last season, Shane who just heard and Kaia Savannah, a teacher and a parent at Ellis. Part two is out right now. Go listen, I’ll see you over there.

CREDITS

NO ONE IS COMING TO SAVE US is a Lemonada media original presented by and created with Neighborhood Villages. The show is produced by Kryssy Pease and Alex McOwen, Veronica Rodriguez is our engineer music is by Hannis Brown. Our executive producers are Stephanie Wittels Wachs, Jessica Cordova Kramer, and me Gloria Riviera. If you like the show, and you believe what we’re doing is important. Please help others find us by leaving us a rating and writing us a review. Do you have your own experiences and frustrations with the childcare system? Do you have ideas for what we could do to make it better? Join the no one is coming to save us Facebook group where we can continue the conversation together. You can also follow us and other Lemonada podcasts at @LemonadaMedia across all social platforms. Thank you so much for listening. We will be back next week. Until then hang in there. You can do it.