Yesterday, Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker released long-awaited reopening guidelines for the state’s child care programs: “Massachusetts Child and Youth Serving Programs Reopen Approach: Minimum Requirements for Health and Safety.”

Programs can reopen in Phase 2 of the state’s four-phase rollout. The exact date for reopening will depend on an ongoing analysis of the state’s COVID-19 data. The guidelines are being released now so that programs can plan for the operational changes they will need to make – and so that they can share these changes with families.

The reopening guidelines set high standards for health and sanitation that should protect children and staff. These standards were developed by an inter-agency working group of education, human services, and public health officials, and they were reviewed by medical experts at Boston Children’s Hospital.

As The Boston Globe reports, “…child care centers can begin to submit plans for reopening as soon as they satisfy newly released health and safety guidelines.” Massachusetts’ planning requirements are more thorough than those of most other states.

The Globe adds:

“Those guidelines, released by the Massachusetts Department of Early Education and Care (EEC), call for all children and staff to be screened daily before they can be admitted and for non-contact temperature checks to be conducted. Staff and children over 2 are encouraged to wear masks whenever six feet of physical distancing is not possible.”

Children must remain in the same group all day with the same teacher. And there are recommendations for group size and staff-to-child ratios. For example, for infants — ages birth to 14 months — the maximum group size (counting students and staff) is nine. The staff/child ratios are 1:3 or 2:7. Similarly, the maximum group size for pre-K is 12, and the staff/child ratio is 2:10.

Other minimum requirements include:

• “A cleaning plan that identifies what items must be cleaned, sanitized, or disinfected and with what frequency.”

• “A plan for identifying and handling sick, symptomatic, and exposed children and staff” that includes daily screening checks and identifying staff who will do the screenings.

• preparing “all cleaning, sanitizing, and disinfecting solutions” and identifying “a safe place for storage” that is “accessible to staff… but out of reach of children.”

• setting up the program space to encourage physical distancing

• having a plan to train back-up staff, and

• assisting children with hand washing and other sanitary practices

Reopening will be challenging, and programs will need time to study these guidelines and implement them.

“As programs reopen they are going to need help and support to think about health and safety screening measures for young children; thinking about how you support children’s social-emotional development; and maintain social distancing,” Amy O’Leary, the director of Strategy for Children’s Early Education for All campaign, told Fox 25 News.

And as the guidelines themselves acknowledge:

“The Commonwealth recognizes that COVID-19 has presented significant, unexpected challenges for the child and youth-serving program community. Further, EEC understands that it may be challenging for child care programs to meet the requirements for reopening in the earlier phases and is cognizant that some programs may have to remain temporarily closed as a result.”

The guidelines add:

“EEC is also aware that the proposed requirements may present particular challenges for family child care providers and is continuing to consider ways to support these critical providers as they prepare to reopen.”

Please share the guidelines and frequently asked questions with your networks. Take the EEC feedback survey if you have additional questions or comments. Or visit the EEC reopen webpage for more information.

As Massachusetts reopens, having safe, affordable, high-quality child care will be vital for children’s growth and development, for parents going back to work, and for the economy as a whole.