With constant COVID closures, parents with kids in day care are at their wit’s end: ‘I honestly don’t know how we keep doing this’

CHICAGO -- After taking two unpaid weeks off when her family was home with COVID-19, Emma Branson was ready to get her toddler back to day care.

Finally, her 2-year-old could play with his friends, and she could focus on work.

But after just one day back, the day care closed for 10 days. Again.

“It really threw a wrench in things,” said Branson, a Chicago mom and an environmental technician.

Since the pandemic began, day care centers have been caught in a cycle of managing frustrated parents and changing guidance while trying to operate. And amid recent national headlines focused on Chicago Public Schools’ issues, parents, teachers and directors said they feel left behind in guidance and left out of larger conversations that seem to forget their families.

“I don’t feel like a lot of things are considered,”