Good morning all,

As you know the Governor of Florida issued Executive Order 20-91 directing everyone to say home for thirty days unless they have essential work to do or for activities such as buying food or going to church. He used by association the same essential duties he had defined in Executive Order 20-89 for the Miami area. In this order child care and related support activities were included as essential. There is a link to the Executive Orders below, but here are the two paragraphs on the subject. Please note the limitations placed on doing child care.

v. Childcare facilities providing services that enable employees exempted in this Order to work as permitted.  

     To the extent possible, childcare facilities should operate under the following mandatory conditions:

   bb. Office space and administrative support necessary to perform any of the above listed activities;

For those of you that are open, please consider remaining open as long as you can and as long as you think it is safe to do so. As a “heads-up” we are expecting approval from OEL to provide fully funded child care to the children of first responders and healthcare workers regardless of their income levels. As the details become available I will share them. If you run out of space to serve the children of truly essential parents, such as first responders, you may need to use the Executive Order as justification to make room for those that need the care the most.

You will also find the questions and answers from the webinar we had on 3/30/2020 linked below. As always, I recommend that you continue to provide the same high-quality early care and education that you regularly provide. If you have questions please feel free to contact me at 850-693-0808 or [email protected] . 

Suzan Gage

Executive Director

Sponsored by the Early Learning Coalition of Northwest Florida and the State of Florida, Office of Early Learning