CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The clock is ticking for hundreds of CMS families to find childcare for their kids before and after class since the district decided to cut all but 25 of its ASEP programs due to funding problems.
Eighty-five ASEP, or after-school enrichment programs, were offered district-wide for students to have a place to go to complete homework, continue learning, and socialize as their parents worked.
In February, CMS decided to cut 60 of the programs due to a loss in revenue because of low enrollment.
As kids head back to the classroom more frequently, parents are scrambling to find childcare in an effort to keep their jobs.
"How am I going to figure this out," Virginia Gregory said, as she talked about the struggles of being a single mother of two elementary students, a full-time employee leading a pediatric nursing team on a COVID unit, and finding affordable childcare.
"I'm just trying to get through to the next week with whatever life brings at us," she said.
Her girls have been enrolled in CMS's ASEP program, which costs her a fraction of the cost of a babysitter or nanny.
Gregory said since the pandemic, she's had 11 caretakers rotate through her home for childcare.
"They need this program and I need this program in order to go to work," she explained.
CMS said they don't want to see the well-liked programs go away, but it's the only option they have after suffering an estimated $800,000 deficit every month due to enrollment being down for the programs.
"They do have alternate options available to them in the community that many of our families are choosing as a result of the stressors that are in place on all of us as a result of the pandemic," Brian Kingsley, the chief academic officer at CMS, said as he spoke to the school board in February.
"I'm saddened that the information wasn't given earlier and it was just decided for us," Gregory said.
She is hopeful a rise in enrollment will spare her program, but she's not so sure about others in the district.
"It's been very difficult as a parent to figure out how to troubleshoot -- am I going back to school? And if I am, I don't know what my childcare is going to look like," she continued.
"It was more than just a blow when we heard that the program was closing. It felt like a punch to the gut," Gregory said.
She's advocating for parents to get their enrollment up in their ASEP programs to try and save them as she hopes CMS will reconsider their decision.