Families with young children in New Jersey and beyond are at a breaking point due to the current guidelines for childcare centers operating during the COVID-19 pandemic. Countless news articles and social posts shout into the void every day about how this nationwide cohort of parents, many of whom have children who were born into the pandemic, is desperately in need of help.

The current New Jersey state guidelines (as of January 6, 2022) for childcare centers are unsustainable and detrimental to the mental health and economic stability of families with young children, who are not eligible for the vaccine (and likely won't be, if at all, until Summer 2022). Implementation of the State's current guidelines has also been inconsistent and confusing to both parents and providers, with many childcare centers (as of mid-January) sticking with previous, outdated guidelines and/or adding on additional rules, such as post-travel PCR testing requirements.

Making things more complicated and controversial: students who have tested positive for COVID-19 in the past 90 days now get a special pass at many childcare centers, being allowed to return to school immediately following a close contact exposure or common cold symptoms. While practical in theory, the situation offers parents a dangerous Devil’s bargain of 90 days of uninterrupted childcare so long as their child gets infected first.

It's time for New Jersey to offer up solutions and new, consistent policies for public and private childcare centers, including preschools, center-based and in-home daycares, and universal 3K and PreK programs. It's time for guidelines that can keep communities safe AND support the struggling families of young children.

We put forward two realistic guidelines that will offer us stability in this next phase of the pandemic:

1. Adopt Test to Stay + Stop Quarantines
2. Normalize Runny Noses + Eliminate Testing without Exposure

1) Adopt Test to Stay + Stop Quarantines

The current 8-day close contact quarantine guideline is overly restrictive, inequitable, and not in line with the state's stated goal of keeping students in schools, nor is it reflective of the latest CDC guidelines (which call for a 5-day quarantine for all asymptomatic close contacts, regardless of vaccination status). What's a solution? We can stop the quarantine chaos by adopting Test to Stay.

• New Jersey recently approved Test to Stay for public schools (K-12), which allows unvaccinated, asymptomatic children who test negative on a rapid antigen test for the coronavirus to continue with in-person instruction after having close contact with a COVID-positive student.
• Children who are too young for the public school system are inequitably being held to a separate standard if Test to Stay is not included in the guidelines for childcare centers.
• How Test to Stay Works: New Jersey public schools choosing to participate in Test to Stay provide rapid antigen testing in-school or at an offsite location coordinated by the school district. Students are not required to quarantine and are tested immediately following the notification of close contact. A negative test result allows the child to return to class immediately and to continue to test every other day until the end of the 8-day timeframe, with the last test being performed at the end of the 8-day period (or on the next school day).
• The State should extend resources and funds to childcare centers to facilitate Test to Stay. Without state-funded implementation, Test to Stay will solely benefit schools and families with the economic means to purchase rapid antigen tests.
• Families who elect to keep their children home can continue to do so.

2) Normalize Runny Noses + Eliminate PCR Testing without Exposure

From ear infections and the common cold to coxsackieviruses and RSV, young children get sick ALL the time. This is what little immune systems are supposed to do as they learn the world. 

Common cold symptoms and fevers result in PCR testing that regularly keep kids out of childcare for 3+ days, even if they are feeling better and fever free for more than 24 hours. Every hour of every day there is a parent stopping everything, pulling their sick kid out of bed, and scrambling to find quick-turn PCR tests. While awaiting PCR results, young children spend more time in quarantine while their parent(s) attempt to continue full- or part-time employment.

• Childcare centers should return to the practical, pre-COVID gold standard: children can, if they are well enough, return to school after they are fever-free for 24 hours. 
• Stop the mandatory testing, or the requirement of a specific alternate diagnosis from a doctor, for children who have common cold symptoms or a fever when there is no known close contact exposure. Testing in this instance should be optional -- just like it's optional for everyone in society with a cold who is over 4 years old.
• As per the CDC, K-12 students can return to school once cold symptoms improve or they are fever-free after 24 hours. With no known exposure, there is no test requirement for these older children -- regardless of vaccination status.
• These testing requirements put added strain on our already over-burdened testing centers, urgent cares and pediatricians. And it's an outdated, ineffective method of catching cases: children with COVID-19 are routinely asymptomatic. 

The past two years of stop-and-start childcare and disrupted routines have been detrimental to children’s social and emotional wellbeing, and a hardship to working families across all income levels. While the rest of the country returns to a "post pandemic" normal, it's only getting more challenging for parents of young children.

We ask the State of the New Jersey for help. We ask childcare centers for less rules and more empathy.

And we call on parents across the country to put forward similar petitions to their state representatives.