“We appreciate all that you did to help us roll with the punches during the pandemic—and for providing a resource that our family desperately needed during this difficult time.” — A Hephzibah Day Care parent
FOR MOST OAK PARK FAMILIES, THE FIRST FEW MONTHS OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC WERE A BLUR, and what working parents do remember wasn’t good: day after day of “Zooming” into the office and trying to meet work deadlines while helping their kids cope with the frustrations of virtual learning. Overloaded Wi-Fi networks, crashing computers and stir-crazy kids leaping over sofas to burn off energy. Some days, it seemed like the only happy household member was the family dog.
By Summer 2020, Hephzibah had come to the rescue with a socially distanced summer camp for school-aged children. For eight glorious weeks, bone-tired working parents got a break from the crushing daily pressures of the COVID-19 lockdown.
But the school year was looming. With COVID on the rise, Oak Park School District 97 made a late-summer decision to go fully remote—and working parents who had barely made it through the Spring 2020 lockdown were now facing more of the same.
As families weighed their options, which ranged from bad to worse—Hephzibah’s Day Care team was collaborating closely with Oak Park School District 97 to come up with a better solution.
“Our Day Care program has served the needs of working parents for almost 45 years, but never during a global pandemic,” says Day Care Director Amy O’Rourke. “In two weeks flat, we transformed our after-school daycare program into a full-day remote learning program for families of all income levels—and hired 31 new full-time employees!”
Preparing for the first day of the 2020–21 academic year was an agency-wide endeavor. Our finance and fundraising departments began searching for resources to help fund the remote-learning program. Staff members purchased e-learning equipment, PPE and sanitation supplies. Our human resources team worked overtime to onboard and help train the new hires.
On August 31, Hephzibah launched its full-day program at three Oak Park elementary schools and met a vital need in the community for e-learning support and supervision—as well as after-school recreation and enrichment—for hundreds of school-aged children.
For the first time in its history, Hephzibah also opened its program to middle schoolers—a welcome development for parents who worked outside of the home or did not have the time to guide their sixth- and seventh-graders through their virtual school days. Although the remote learning program required a sixfold increase in full-time staff, Hephzibah kept its hourly rates at pre-pandemic levels and continued to offer a sliding-fee scale and scholarships for lower-income families.
When District 97 transitioned to a hybrid learning model in February 2021—with in-person learning at school in the morning and remote learning at home in the afternoon—Hephzibah pivoted again, partnering with United Lutheran Church to provide a full-day site for students who preferred to remain fully remote. For students participating in the district’s hybrid learning program, Hephzibah offered afternoon e-learning support and recreational activities at seven elementary schools. When the school district reverted to full-day, in-person learning in mid-March, Hephzibah returned to its traditional after-school daycare model.
In Summer 2021, 290 children attended Hephzibah Summer Camp. Although CDC guidelines still called for masks and social distancing, our counselors made sure there was no shortage of fun.
“Our summer camp staff was amazing,” says O’Rourke. “They had outdoor water days with slip-and-slide kickball and water squirters and special events such as our Monday staff challenges, when our campers got to ‘challenge’ the staff with antics such as a pie in the face. The kids had a great summer.”
Of course, all of this pivoting came with a price tag, and Hephzibah’s Day Care program ran a staggering $1 million deficit. Some of the costs were offset by a PPP loan, District 97 scholarships for low-income families and contributions from benefactors. The rest? It was simply the cost of doing what Hephzibah Day Care has done for nearly half a century, says O’Rourke: providing safe, enriching care for children and peace of mind for working parents.
“This program has been a total game-changer for our family,” wrote one appreciative working mom. “After months of isolation and monotony, our kids are making friends again, playing games, working on crafts and spending more time outside. I’m finally able to focus on my job without feeling guilty. I can’t overstate how grateful our whole family is for Hephzibah!”
This piece was originally published in our 2020-2021 Annual Report.
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