Families left in a bind as school cancellations stack up

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (KCTV) - As school districts shut down for another snow day, it leaves families in a bind.

For parents who work, like the Sappington family, that means they have to scramble to find last-minute childcare.

“We have to scramble to arrange child car before we have to get to our busy jobs,” Matthew Sappington said.

Matthew and his wife are both local physicians and can’t take the day off.  “It’s really tough when you have two working parents in a house; tough to arrange last-minute childcare,” Sappington said.

This is where Mary Esselman, the CEO of Operation Breakthrough, steps up to help out.

“When school is out, we always try to be in,” Esselman said. “It’s going to be cold, and it’s going to be snowy, but we are going to be here to them getting to work. We know that a lot of our families are first responders; they might be care assistants, but we know that they need someone there to care for them as well. So, we want to help be a part of that chain of .”

Esselman said they are expecting about 150 kids on Tuesday.  “We will run 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., so that gives everyone a chance to get here and get home later in the day,” Esselman said. “We will run our before and after school programs, and we will also run our Early Care and Education Program.”

You can head to their website for more information.  As for the Sappingtons, they’d like to see some sort of policy put in place geared to helping families like theirs during times like this.

“We have already been out three days last week, already canceled for Tuesday, and many of us are health care workers,” said Sappington’s wife. “All these people that work regardless of the weather, and we never take a snow day. So, it would be great if there were policies from our local public school systems to help the working parents be able to provide health care for our community and have reasonable and safe childcare.”

Copyright 2024 KCTV. All rights reserved.