Subscribe to Lemonada Premium for Bonus Content

Description

Gloria explores how the child care crisis is impacting the people living it every day by talking to a parent and teacher at Ellis Early Learning in Boston. In the second part of our 2-part premiere, she calls up some familiar faces from last season – Shane Dunn and Kiya Savannah. Shane, a parent at Ellis, tells Gloria about how his family has balanced child care and full-time work over the past year, and why he feels like the world is moving on without families with children under 5. Then, Kiya, a teacher and a parent at Ellis, tells Gloria about her life-changing promotion, how she manages raising her own daughter while taking care of so many other people’s kids, and why she’s still thinking about leaving the industry.

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.

Joining Lemonada Premium is a great way to support our show and get bonus content. Subscribe today at bit.ly/lemonadapremium.

Click this link for a list of current sponsors and discount codes for this show and all Lemonada shows: https://lemonadamedia.com/sponsors/.

Laugh, cry, be outraged, and hear solutions! Join our community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/nooneiscomingtosaveus.

Stay up to date with us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at @LemonadaMedia.

For additional resources, information, and a transcript of the episode, visit lemonadamedia.com.

Transcript

SPEAKERS

Gloria Riviera, Shane Dunn, Miss Kiya

Gloria Riviera  00:05

I’m at the dentist with my two youngest, it’s 4:40 in the afternoon, and the dental assistant just came out to say, okay, I’m taking the two back now. You know, Mom has to stay, so you know how it goes. And like, literally, I was like, thank God. I have some peace and quiet for a moment.

Gloria Riviera 

This is No One Is Coming To Save us from Lemonada Media. I’m Gloria Riviera. That was me in the quiet, lovely momentarily kid free zone, also known as my children’s dentist office. Good times. Brief, but good times. So everyone, are you back? Are you just finding us? That’s cool, but just FYI, this particular episode is part two of two. So if you haven’t listened to our first part with Lauren Cook, the CEO of Ellis, Early Learning Center in Boston, then go listen to that and come back. We’ll be right here. In part one, we heard from Lauren about what it’s been like to run a childcare center over the past year, how Omicron threw them for a loop, how labor shortages are making it impossible to staff classrooms. Now in part two, we’ll check in with the people who experienced those same challenges from the other side. The parents and teachers at Ellis will hear from two familiar faces, or should I say familiar voices. We met in season one, Shane Dunn, a parent at Ellis early learning and Kiya Savannah, who is both a parent and a teacher at Ellis. We’re going to start off with Shane. Last time we spoke he showed us what a day in the life of a working parent of two young kids was like.

Shane Dunn  02:30

There’s a song from Frozen that they use the word crazy a few times. He said, I want to hear the song crazy. I know but I know you want that song. Literally the minute you get into the car and I buckle him into his car seat. He’s like, I want to hear it. But I need to record a little bit. I don’t know if we’re gonna be able to today, Liam. I know you’re going crazy. I know you were gonna get school soon. I will say our son is very strong willed. Love that about him. Back into the car. All right. So both kids are now at their buildings at Ellis. And now I can go to work as Ken, my wife, Elizabeth, and hopefully the kids have a great day.

Gloria Riviera 

I will say when I do these interviews, my own kids are usually at school out of the house. Not always. But when I spoke with Shane, this time around, he was sitting on his kitchen floor, which I totally get as a reasonable spot when you are working from home. Prior to the pandemic, both he and his wife Elizabeth worked big jobs that took them into the office every day. Shane still works in his same field, fundraising. But now of course what that looks like has been turned on its head. So Shane is on the kitchen floor juggling work with childcare for his two kids, four-and-a-half-year-old son Liam, and two-and-a-half-year-old daughter Eleanor, both home from school. You’ll hear lots of Liam in this episode. And if you have not listened to season one, run, don’t walk because Liam is I think I can say with confidence, the star of the first episode. Anyway, there is a COVID breakout in Shane’s family and they are quarantining, is that an actual verb? Anyway, so he’s on the kitchen floor besieging his son to continue his digital learning. While graciously also speaking to us. Shane told me he feels like the world is moving on but his family is unable to. There is still no COVID vaccine available for his kids. And while the pandemic shone a light on the childcare crisis, he doesn’t really feel like we In the country, or even the state in which he lives, has a workable plan. Now, I am an optimist, but he’s right. I felt down about that. But then I realized, that’s why we’re doing this podcast. We need to find a workable plan together. On that note, here’s my conversation with Shane.

Shane Dunn  05:23

Oh, here we go. Gloria. So Liam is asking me for something

Gloria Riviera 

Hi, Liam!

Shane Dunn

Do you want to say hi to Ms. Gloria?

Gloria Riviera

No, he’s like, no.

Shane Dunn 

But I’ll give you some muffin just a little bit. Can you go finish Mr. Brown, please? Finish your patterns. Okay, finish your patterns. And as soon as we’re done, we’ll get lunch. Thank you, bud.

Gloria Riviera 

Oh, my god, Shane, how do you get anything done? I’m like, having PTSD just watch you.

Shane Dunn 

It’s been crazy, still been hard. So I will say the last several months have been easier at times. Because our kids have mostly been at school or daycare. And that’s helped immensely to allow my wife Elizabeth and me to do our jobs. But the days when that’s not happening, it really is frustrating and unpredictable and hard. And, you know, we’re just fortunate to have access to great childcare for our daughter, Eleanor at Ellis. And then our son is in a Boston Public School in our neighborhood, that’s a 10-minute walk. But he doesn’t have aftercare. He doesn’t have school care that school doesn’t provide it to pick them up every day at three or caregiver does.

Gloria Riviera  06:28

Three comes really fast.

Shane Dunn 

[…] Unless you’ve got a babysitter, which we’ve had. But that’s inconsistent to, due to COVID when someone’s been exposed.

Gloria Riviera 

I was gonna ask you, what was your first logistical thought this morning that you can remember? Was there a moment you open your eyes? I feel like it just happened so fast for me every morning. I’m like, okay, I’ve got to do this.

Shane Dunn 

For this week. And, you know, still figuring out, we haven’t told everyone that we have COVID. Right. So there’s been this touching go of who knows where COVID versus we’re just sicker exposed, right? But it’s been, which is not dissimilar to other parts of the pandemic, at least to earlier days. Like, who gets to do their job today?

Gloria Riviera 

Who gets to do their job today?

Shane Dunn 

And you know, for a range of reasons we make those decisions anyway.

Gloria Riviera 

But is that an actual like, that’s a decision you and your wife like, okay, who’s gonna work? And who’s gonna run the rest of the shift.

Shane Dunn 

As soon meetings that are unavoidable, or if we missed that meeting will set us back more next week or in the future. Yeah, that’s the real life. And that brings me back to the earliest days when our kids were certainly home and everyone had their kids at home, if they had kids, you know, we have those days where you can do half of our jobs during the day, because the other half was the other person was caregiving, right? Or napping or diapering, whatever. We’re back at it again this week with quarantine or exposure requirements. So that’s kind of what happens in the morning who’s doing their job? Or who’s doing part of their job? None of us is getting 100% done. So who’s gonna do part of it? Who’s gonna go to meetings, whatever it is.

Gloria Riviera  08:07

Right. Who’s gonna be in the room where the door can be actually closed? And not sitting on your kitchen floor where you are now talking to me? What has it been like financially to have one child transferred out of Ellis in a public school system? I heard you mentioned babysitters, like how does it feel on the checkbook?

Shane Dunn

No, it’s a great question, Gloria, it’s helped a little bit, not having two children in child care, which we know is so expensive, and again, naming our privilege that we were private pay families who paid for Ellis since our son was four months old, and our daughter since four months old. It’s nice to not have to pay for our older child to go to school every day. However, as we said, his school when we actually entered his school, we assumed he would have after school care until 6pm, which was why we chose to send him to this school in our neighborhood, given it was a difficult school to get into which is not dissimilar to childcare, finding your choice, right? It’s not guaranteed it’s hard. His school in our neighborhood is a small school. So again, seats are limited. However, within our first week of him being in the new school, the after-school care provider had not had his paperwork together. And then within a couple of weeks, the principal made a decision to kind of cut the contract entirely and assumed we would have care within a few weeks after that. That was early on. It was late September, early October. I’m talking to you early March. None of our families have after school care right now we’re all doing it on our own. Either your own family resources or hiring private help. Which took us several months to find a babysitter or babysitters who would pick our kid up and just be with them for two hours a day. And that has been touch and go because COVID We’ve had exposures among our babysitters are us so we obviously don’t want to keep going so there’s been no consistency throughout the school year again. Do you want consistency really has been Eleanor when she is at Ellis, think you’re up at 5:20 every day. On the days that Ellis is open, her classroom is open. But again, her classroom has certainly been closed as well due to exposures. Ellis has done a phenomenal job. But there’s certainly been that. So danger question checkbook has been […], but we are seeing we’re supplementing with care. So I don’t think we’ve seen too much of a difference.

Gloria Riviera  10:17

Right, like different headache, different headache, different challenge. What is your experience been like at Ellis? How have you experienced what they’ve been going through in terms of trying to provide a consistent, stable, warm environment?

Shane Dunn 

Yeah, they’ve been through so much. They’ve done their best. I will say this over and over again, the staff, the administrators, the rest is families. The kids are resilient. But it’s hard to keep saying kids are resilient, or adults are resilient, right? We’re going through trauma. We’re all going through this collective experiment. And unfortunately, the rest of the world has moved on, right? Those of us with families of young kids are forgotten about it. Those of us who can’t be vaccinated.

Gloria Riviera 

Oh, my God, there’s an ant emergency.

Shane Dunn 

Can I let the ant go and bring it to this friends later, please? Can you go back to Mr. Brown? Okay, do what you can do. And I’ll be right there.

Gloria Riviera 

I’m so sorry, Shane, I know. We’re pulling you in 19 directions. I’m so sorry. So what’s weighing on you right now, two years in to this pandemic? You know, no after care at your son’s school. You see the struggles that Ellis you know, what weighs on you like, another way to ask that question is just how are you doing?

Shane Dunn 

We’re struggling again, we’re more privileged than some. And I’ll say that and appreciate that we have that. But it doesn’t make it easy every day to get through work, kids, managing a house managing a future with young kids. First of all weighs on me as vaccines. Again, unfortunately, we have now had COVID in our house, but which we got through two years. Thankfully, we haven’t. But I want the vaccine to be available for my children. I know parents, there’s a range of feelings on the scale. We certainly care about their children. So I think that’s number one. Number two is again that the world has moved on. And I appreciate some of that, because we all want to return to normalcy and feeling good again and traveling or whatever. At the same time, there’s this expectation that we are back to normal and we’re not, my wife feels that at her job. I feel that’s amazing. My job, I think our social groups, our families, we all just want to get back to normal and I want to, we can’t, we’re doing part of it. We’ve done some of it, but it’s not there yet. And I think three the long term, just the systemic impact on families is huge. And the kids, we don’t know what our kids are gonna feel like in 15 years, due to the pandemic, whether they’ve had access to high quality care or not, or schooling, which we’ve had, but I still don’t know what’s gonna happen on our own kids. And then again, I’m glad this conversation has been elevated. And thank you to you for elevating this conversation around the early childhood sector. We want to keep fighting for more, but I just feel sad that it hasn’t happened sooner. That’s taking a pandemic to elevate and we still have no guarantees that the world is going to shift and you’re going to recognize this as a public good. And that our early childhood teachers are worth the value that they give.

Gloria Riviera  13:21

Liam, are there ants over there? How many ants?

Shane Dunn 

I’m embarrassed to say we have ants but we live in a city and it happens.

Gloria Riviera 

Oh, hello, like, ants are the least of my property. Liam, I want to know if you can hear me. Well, I have to ask you guys both Liam. Are you still into frozen?

Shane Dunn 

Who listens to Frozen?

Gloria Riviera 

It’s still in the house. Well that I can sleep at night now. Thank you for talking to us. I really appreciate it; I really appreciate your time. I will let you go take care of the muffins and the ants.

Shane Dunn  14:01

Thank you. Yes, we are grateful to Ellis, grateful from this childhood sector. We’re grateful the public school system there’s so much to be grateful for there’s also a lot of frustration on the system side, right? The system is failing our kids, our families. We know that our politicians even more.

Gloria Riviera 

Such a price. Thanks Shane.

Gloria Riviera 

Welcome back, next we’re going to check in with Kiya Savannah, who is a teacher and the parent at Alice. Guys, I just love Kaia. I’m a little intimidated by her in a good way. I know a lot of hard workers but Kaia is next level. Let’s take a quick Listen to my first conversation with Kiya from season one.

Miss Kiya 

Three, I like to have fun, like, my classroom is all about getting these kids rallied up. I just love doing different things with them that can get their little brains working and get them so excited. I think that’s the best part is when a kid is like overly excited about something like yes, I nailed it. So now what I do on instruments and music, like, oh, yeah, you babysit kids all day? No, it’s not just that I really want to make sure when my children leave my classroom that they leave with something, they learn something, what do they do with the street, they may a swing with a tire. They use it to play padding, we’ll see right? They use it for campfires, they use this tree in so many ways. You know, it’s not just me changing their diaper and, you know, wiping their noses. It’s actually beginning to build their brain for their future.

Gloria Riviera  16:00

Kiya has been teaching it Alice for seven years. And you will hear her say she just got a new job within Alice in the BPS classroom. That’s Boston Public Schools. What that means is that in addition to the little babies and toddlers at Ellis, they also have two UPK classrooms, universal pre-K. And because they’re run by Boston Public Schools, you know what that magic phrase public school means, higher wages. So Kiya managed to get one of those coveted positions within Ellis. Yay, right? Well, yes and no, she matter of factly tells me she keeps the door open to other jobs. Even though this is 1,000%, her dream job, she went to college to study early education. But she keeps that door open, because she’s a single mom, and she has a two-year-old daughter to take care of. And that, that takes money. So as Kiya will tell you, it’s complicated. And it is far from perfect. So let’s get into it.

Miss Kiya 

I know last time we spoke; I was trying to get into any position at Ellis. I got it. So it is a UPK classroom that is under VPS. So I was getting observed today by some VPS coaches.

Gloria Riviera 

Okay, cool. So tell me as soon as you said that it came flooding back to me, that’s a big deal. And why is that a big deal to you.

Miss Kiya

It’s a big deal. Because one, it’s something that I’ve always, you know, wanted to do and to have, it came with more, more money. So my salary is, is higher than it was before, which helps me out.

Gloria Riviera 

So when you were really ready to go and leave and considering other jobs, what made you stay?

Miss Kiya

Because it’s something that I really enjoy doing. Like It, it, I always feel like I’m turning away from my kids, my students, if I leave and you know, I can’t, you know, shine that light on new students, when they come into my classroom. Like this is something that I truly, truly enjoy. And if I can stay in this field, but just figure out how I can make more money. You know, I would love to keep doing this. I don’t really see anything else I would want to do.

Gloria Riviera  18:33

Right? And I see you as someone who thrives off of connection with other people just the way you talk about your daughter and the way you’ve you know, done this crazy, cartwheeling juggling act to stay in your role at Ellis. Do you think there are other factors that are keeping caregivers from doing their best work? Or is it the salary?

Miss Kiya 

It can be a lot of things? It can be the hours, right? You know, for this setting, school, you’re either working 8 to 5 or 8:30 to 5:30. Now, I have my daughter, and even though she is here, we don’t get home until six 630 That’s really late for someone with a just a child period. No matter what age they are, you know, you have to cook dinner, you have to get them ready for bed. I’m not spending time with my daughter. You know, last night I stayed here to prepare myself for the observation. I didn’t get home till 7:30 or 8 o’clock. I missed her dinner time. And I was like, You know what, I feel so bad. I haven’t seen you all day. Let’s just spend 30 minutes coloring and we just sat there at the table in colored and taught but it’s like those moments are important, because I don’t ever want my child to feel like I’m not spending time with her and I’m on all I’m doing is working to make sure I have money for food on the table. So that can be a major factor.

Gloria Riviera  20:16

Are you still looking at other jobs? Are you keeping your eye out just to have options open? Or does this new role? Make you feel like, no?

Miss Kiya 

if I absolutely have to, because I am struggling financially. And I’ve mentioned this before, I would, like it’s gotten to a point where my interest and my passion will have to be set aside unless I can think of something else to do. Like, I know, I thought about starting my own business or, you know, doing something that has nothing to do with education. It just pays more just so I can live a comfortable life without, you know, struggling.

Gloria Riviera 

Have you seen your friends leave or co-workers leave?

Miss Kiya 

I’ve been at Ellis for seven years and people that I have started with have definitely have left it. And I know some of the reasons are people want to start a family. So they feel like this is not the right place where you want to start a family. Dealing as far as like stress, I’ve seen some people go back to school to get their masters to seek other opportunities. And I just been people who have left because they just simply, you know, figured out that this is not what they want to do.

Gloria Riviera 

Right. I mean, when I asked you that question before about have you considered leaving the way you answered it so concisely, you’re like, yeah, yeah. It seemed to me you’ve thought that through. So you’re nodding right now.

Miss Kiya 

I’m being honest, I definitely have like, even though I’m, I’m okay right now, it doesn’t mean that I’m going to be okay in the next three years, I do have some long-term goals for myself. And, you know, one of them is when my daughter is five, which will be her last year at Ellis, if she is still, you know, going here, which I’m pretty sure she will be. I set that as that will be my time to go. So she’s going to be three. So from three until five. I’m really trying to figure out what else I can do. And it has nothing to do with. I don’t like while I’m working. It just goes back into I need to make a major move that’s going to help me in the long run. So I don’t ever have to run into like a financial hiccup again.

Gloria Riviera  22:51

Right. A painful financial hiccup. Kiya, I feel like I look at you. And I think it would be easy from an outsider’s perspective to say, oh my god, she’s this amazing teacher and her daughter gets to be there. You know, all during her working hours. You know, she she’s really lucky. And I know that you feel that you are, but it doesn’t mean that it’s also easy.

Miss Kiya 

It’s definitely not. I mean, I have the luxury I guess I can say of not having to drop my daughter off at a different location in the mornings, which makes my mornings a tad bit easier. But I don’t remember I do live an hour away from my job. It’s an hour and two traffic. So I live an hour away with the two-year-old in the car. So my mornings, you know, aren’t, you know, smooth. I have to get up at 5:30 in the morning. I have to get myself ready to get my daughter ready. We have to get we have to make sure we’re out the door at a certain time because I am an opening teacher. So if I’m late, I have parents and children waiting for me. So it’s like I have a huge responsibility that I have to make sure I meet every single day. And my daughter has to go to her classroom, which is happening right now. She has new teachers in her classroom. So at the moment we are going through you know what I felt we call it but she’s crying every day. It’s like, Mommy has to go to work. Like, you know, it’ll be fine, but my daughter’s crying.

Gloria Riviera  24:44

Oh, god, that’s the worst. That’s the worst. I feel like I have like trauma coming back into my brain from that.

Miss Kiya 

So hard to leave her like that.

Gloria Riviera 

And it’s different when the teacher is telling you like, oh, you can leave now we’ve got this, that’s different from, like the stress you feel of needing to be somewhere urgently, which I imagine you feel, and she’s in tears.

Miss Kiya 

Even that, it’s like, I feel like I’m leaving my child to go deal with other children who are going through the same problem, and I couldn’t even comfort my child. So, yeah, we’re going through that right now. So our morning, definitely not easy. I’m hoping that she you know, it gets a little bit better. And she becomes more familiar with her teachers as the weeks go on.

Gloria Riviera 

It’s late in the year so she has new teachers because her other teachers have left so she’s getting a new someone. So that stability is broken.

Miss Kiya 

Yes, yes.

Gloria Riviera 

Okay. Well, I will be hoping that she it gets easier for her.

Miss Kiya 

Yes, I hope so too.

Gloria Riviera 

You can do it. You guys can do it. Okay, well, Kiya, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I know your day is packed. And we’ve already taken up a lot of your time.

Miss Kiya 

We’re good.

Gloria Riviera  26:07

So you know what kills me about these interviews? That tone they both have that is some sort of an equation, resilience, determination, exhaustion, realism, maybe some optimism. It just reinforces that parents and teachers are getting beaten down by the current system. They really are. When Shane said it felt like the world was moving on and he wasn’t. And when Kiya talked about having to leave her own daughter, who was upset because she had a new teacher only to go comfort another child who was also upset. I mean, ouch. I’ve been that mom walking out of the school wiping away tears, because my kid was upset and it sucks. But instead of walking out of the school, imagine having to go take care of someone else’s kid and comfort them. Because that’s your job. I could not do that. I would not be good at that. That’s why I think Kaia is incredible. I want to thank them both for sharing their stories. That is as smack dab in the middle of this crisis as you can get. And while they’re both okay, for now, I’m worried about the future. In case that wasn’t clear. That’s also why I’m doing this podcast. And something I want to do with season two is to highlight all of you and your lives as parents and caregivers. You heard a snippet of mine at the top when I was at the dentist’s office. Remember that magical quiet moment? Well, I hope that you’ll share your memorable parenting and caregiving moments with me, the funny ones, the challenging ones, the proud ones, the AHA ones, the ones where you just maybe hid in your car because you needed a minute of quiet. I’ve done that. All of it. You can brag, you can vent, share whatever you want. All you have to do is whip out your phone and record a short voice memo. And then just email it to me at gloria@lemonadamedia.com. And we will feature some of those moments at the end of the show right here. Okay, well, thank you all for listening. I’m so happy to be back making new episodes and figuring out this crisis together. I am so excited to be on this journey with all of you. I’ll see you all next week. I can’t wait.

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.