COVID-19 cancels Kansas City area camps: 10,000 kids have nowhere to go this summer
With coronavirus restrictions on social distancing, organizers of the Upper Room summer programs decided to drop the number of campers they’d accept this year from the typical 2,000 to just 600.
Then they realized that was still too much. This past week they announced to families that there would be no camp at all this summer.
Scenarios like that are playing out across the metro, as summer programs face impossible challenges for finances and safety.
“I’m just heartbroken,” said Kris Collins, director of educational programming at the Upper Room. “We have exhausted every available means to open this summer and are quite disappointed in this result. It is apparent that our community isn’t fully ready to reopen.”
Programs that haven’t closed have slashed the number of children they can accept, delayed opening or gone online only.
As a result, some 10,000 Kansas City area children who had spots in a summer program last year won’t have anywhere to go this summer, said Mike English, executive director of Turn the Page KC, an education advocacy group.
“Parents who can’t work from home are faced with the excruciating decision: Do I leave my child home alone, try to find some other, but expensive child care or just stay home with them and maybe not work?” he said. “What is really concerning is that so many families depend on summer programs that are not going to be available.”
Girl Scouts of NE Kansas and NW Missouri won’t open camps, which serve thousands of children. The Girl Scouts launched a virtual camp instead. Heart of America Boy Scouts has delayed any camps until later in the summer.
The Rotary Club’s free youth camp is canceled. Funds will be donated to help families hurt by COVID-19.
The MLB’s Urban Youth Academy, which normally would see about 3,000 children, postponed most in-person activities, putting some online.
Science City won’t open its camp at Union Station.
The state of Kansas for now isn’t allowing sleepover camps. Missouri limits the number of campers and requires increased sanitation measures.
‘A perfect storm of problems’
Maria Arceo, a Kansas City mom, says she may have to leave her 14-year-old son home alone and check in with him by phone from work. Maybe, she said, she’ll run home sometimes on her lunch breaks from her job as a lab tech at Samuel U. Rodgers Health Center.
Last year her son attended a day camp in Kansas City, Kansas. Previous years he went to the Upper Room.
“But with everything that is happening and all the restrictions, and social distancing, there is no space anywhere,” Arceo said. She has her son’s name on a list for a nearby church camp, “but the space is limited.”
To meet the demand, English said, many programs “would have to find more space, hire more people and they need more funding.”
“It’s a perfect storm of problems” for summer camps and for parents, said Miles McMahon, director of Theater of the Imagination, which offers drama, singing and dancing classes. “You have to keep everybody safe, kids have to go somewhere and parents can only afford to pay so much.”
If he continues to offer virtual classes, that won’t make it easier for parents to head back into the workforce, he realizes, especially those who can’t afford an all-day sitter.
“At the end of the day, I worry about the prospect of kids being left at home alone,” said Dred Scott, president and chief executive officer of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Kansas City. “It leaves a tremendous gap in our community. We are left thinking about all the things that can happen with a child.”
Compounding the shortage, many child care centers that also run summer camps have already had to shut down because they lost staff, lost clients or couldn’t meet new safety standards.
In Missouri, 45% of child care centers have closed during the pandemic, and in Kansas, 14% closed, according to the Family Conservancy, a Kansas City charity for children and education.
“And even those that are open are operating at a much reduced capacity,” said Paula Neth, the Conservancy’s chief executive officer. “Right now many are not taking in any new children.” They can’t afford it and don’t have the space or the staff, she said.
It costs a lot more to run child care and camps during a pandemic, Neth said. Protective gear has to be purchased, everything is cleaned and sanitized more frequently and added tasks such as taking each child’s temperature before they enter and having fewer children per instructor require additional staff.
And added to the expense, “are the little things, like glue, pencils and crayons,” said Collins. “Kids can’t share those things now. Every child has to have their own, and those costs add up.”
The Upper Room, which provides breakfast, lunch and a snack for its campers, has operated every summer for 20 years at community centers and churches. This year, several churches waved off camps.
“They felt like if they are not letting their own members in the church why would they let in a bunch of kids?” Collins said. Add to that, health guidelines required the camp to cut its usual ratio of 20 campers per teacher down to 10 per teacher. “That takes a lot more space,” Collins said. “A lot of facilities are not equipped for us to spread out that way.”
In the end, Collins wrote a letter to parents saying the camp could not open this summer.
Space and safety
Operation Breakthrough has remained open through the city shutdown to care for the children of essential, front-line workers, while maintaining social distancing rules.
When it starts its camp for children from low-income households June 1, there won’t be room for as many kids as before.
For many parents who have lost their jobs, “they can’t go get a new job until they have child care, and we can’t give them child care until we can take more than 10 children in a space,” said Mary Esselman, the agency’s director. For the preschool alone, Esselman said, more than 100 children are awaiting slots as their parents hope to go back to work.
Operation Breakthrough, the Upper Room and Boys & Girls Clubs are among the largest agencies providing free or reduced priced, in-person summer programs for school-aged children. The demand far exceeds available space.
Operation Breakthrough normally serves about 360 but will only have space for 240.
Boys & Girls Clubs last year served 1,200 children but has room for 400. The organization, which operates at six facilities, is looking to find more space.
“We are not a day care, but our clubs are full of boys and girls whose parents rely on us to care for their children in a safe environment while they work,” Scott said.
Kansas City Parks and Recreation, which will run camps June 1 through Aug. 7, reports that four of its 10 sites are already full and the rest are expected to fill up soon.
Most summers the city’s camps serve about 300 children. “I don’t think it will be quite half of that this summer,” said director Terry Rynard. “It will be closer to 130. But we are looking for alternative space.” And she said they are considering offering some daily activities at neighborhood parks, “where kids who can walk to them have something to do during the day.” But volunteers are needed to run them.
“The reality is that this summer camp is going to be a lot different than it has been in the past,” said Steven Scraggs, senior vice president for youth development for the YMCA of Greater Kansas City, which is operating 13 camp sites — down from 16 last summer — in school buildings in Kansas and Missouri.
Camps are taking extra precautions, Scraggs said. “And it’s going to take a lot more labor to do a little less.”
Children will be met at their car in front of the drop-off point. Camp workers will do a temperature scan and every day ask parents a series of questions: Have you had a cough or a fever? Have you been in contact with anyone who recently traveled abroad, or anyone showing symptoms for COVID-19? Then children will be escorted to their camp room.
“We have to bring on extra staff to perform those tasks,” Scraggs said. Children will be broken up into small groups, doing activities in shifts. And after every shift, the area will have to be cleaned and sanitized. “That will happen dozens of times each day,” Scraggs said.
“No games of tag or duck duck goose this summer,” he said. “We have to rethink the way we do things.”
The Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City’s J Camp in Olathe expects nearly half its usual summer enrollment. To comply with social distance guidelines, “we weren’t able to take as many kids,” said DD Gass, camp director. The camp normally serves 667 children. This summer it will have 350. But, fortunately, Gass said, the camp didn’t have to turn any campers away.
“Parents made the call,” she said. “Some parents just aren’t ready to have their kids in a program with other kids.”
Parents like LaVeeta McHenry, who most summers had her three children spending their weekdays at Upper Room.
This summer they’re staying put at home, participating in a virtual summer school program through Citizens of the World Kansas City, the charter school where Madison, 8, and Gregory, 7, are students. Her 4-year-old starts kindergarten there in the fall.
McHenry decided to keep her kids home out of concern for their safety once she knew she’d likely be working from home this summer.
“Thankfully we have a backyard, so I’ll probably just kind of send them outside every once in a while,” McHenry said. “A little work, a little play. Just try to split it up to create the balance so that we can all survive this without going insane.”
A change of plans
In February, Michelle Millard mapped out the whole summer, filling each week with different camps and activities for her two children. Swim team. A weeklong overnight horse camp. An adoption camp in Colorado.
She labeled the spreadsheet “summer of fun.”
Then everything was canceled. A new, much emptier spreadsheet replaced the original. Millard labeled that one “summer of no fun.”
Now, instead of camp, the Kansas City mother of 10-year-old Will and 8-year-old Nathalie hired a teacher from her daughter’s school, Citizens of the World, to work with the children at their home from 9 a.m. to noon every weekday.
Though she anticipates this will be more expensive than the usual smorgasbord of summer camps, Millard figured the extra time focused on learning would be good for her kids. Plus, it would give some quiet time for the single mother working from home.
But afternoons will “pretty much be a free-for-all,” Millard said, anticipating there will be a lot of TV, games and time outside.
“I always look forward to the overnight camp where they’re gone for a week,” Millard said, adding that while she loves her children, sometimes a break is nice.
For now, the 46-year-old director for an international development firm tries to carve out quiet time for herself in the evening after her kids go to bed.
“I realize that we are extremely privileged to have choices and be able to make adjustments over the summer that will work for our family,” Millard said. “I really feel for families who don’t have as many choices or options and who are really in a hard position this summer with everything canceling.”
Other families hoping their kids can get some extra schoolwork in this summer won’t be able to send off their kids to classrooms. Area school districts have opted to offer summer school classes online only. While a few are planning to have in-person summer activities for elementary-age children, that may not start until July. And that is subject to change.
To find a summer activity, parents can check with the The Family Conservancy summer camp guide, KC’s Summer Camp Guide or ArtsKC.
This story was originally published May 25, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
