Parents Line up for South Windsor Before and After  School Program.  We all saw this headline in Connecticut last spring.  Parents lining up from the wee hours in the morning to get their child into one of the few after school programs in the town.  Most of them wasted their time and ended up on the wait list.  The sad truth was the program had already been filled earlier in the week.

We’ve been advocating for more and affordable before/after school care for a very long time.  Times have changed, now we are desperate for it.  Most families have two working parents, they no longer can afford to have one person stay home; and they also can’t afford to put their children into childcare.

Being a grandmother I watch my daughter and daughter in law’s families try to work and/or find child care for little ones.  In this case something that is affordable. What ended up being affordable was me babysitting on a patchy schedule of care because I also work…part time.  It’s very tough out there.

So what is the solution? The Atlantic magazine has put South Windsor into a report called “Why Does the School Day End Two Hours Before the Workday?” A more in-depth article on what happened in South Windsor and what they and other places did for a short-term fix for the situation and what possible could happen.

You can access it here: https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/09/school-day-parents/569401/