Florida. Florida school and YMCA offer free child care to essential workers

In response to the sustained crisis posed by COVID-19, the Florida School District has partnered with the YMCA of Middletown to provide free child care for school-aged children of essential workers.

Child care is considered an essential function, critical to enabling parents, whose jobs fall under the designation of “essential business,” to go to work. Essential workers include first responders, health-care workers, direct-care workers and other essential services workers such as mail carriers, news media, law enforcement, grocery store workers and pharmacy workers.

The free program will be held at Golden Hill Elementary School for families living in the Florida school district.

If needed, the program will operate Monday-Friday, 7 a.m.-6 p.m.

Participating children will go through a daily health screening by the nurse on site. With the health and safety of every child and staff person involved as the primary concern, the program will take every precaution to prevent exposure to and spread of COVID-19.

To register, go to www.floridaufsd.org to download and print a registration form, or contact program coordinator Irene Rumsey at irumsey@middletownymca.org.