ODESSA, Texas — It's what many parents have been waiting for, especially with kids being cooped up in the house.
Thanks to Governor Abbott's announcement Monday, childcare centers can start taking in all kids, no matter what job they have.
Before this order, childcare centers were limited to caring for only children of essential workers.
This includes everything from daycares to places like the YMCA, but here's the catch: the facilities have to follow strict guidelines.
Although they can start accepting more children, there are still restrictions in place which are hitting facilities' bottom lines, which makes it hard for businesses to stay open.
As more businesses reopen, the demand for childcare is returning, but thanks to the restrictions there is nowhere for the children to go.
Aladdin's Castle is a beloved child care facility that has helped give children a jump start on their education for nearly three decades.
There's often a waiting list to get in, but when COVID-19 first hit our area it slashed the center's enrollment.
"The original fear of the virus, of course, affected my enrollment, I usually have 380 enrolled and we immediately had a loss of about one hundred children," said April Terrel, the owner and director of Aladdin's Castle.
That's not their only challenge-the new guidelines will still restrict money coming in.
"They've got us down to a ratio that we can't take any more kids so we have no openings here at all, so he's opening more businesses but at the same time has us shut down so that we have no openings. I don't know how this will play out but child care is scarce and will be completely scarce in Odessa and Midland," said Terrell.
Other required guidelines include screening all children and their parents at the door and upping their sanitizing efforts.
"We've been very very lucky and blessed that we've kept the center very clean and no child has been sent home ill," said Terrell.
While more restrictions are in place, April Terrell has been relying on federal assistance to keep their doors open.
"Thankfully the payroll protection loan has been available and we were able to get that and that's kept me above water because without it I wouldn't have had any revenue," said Terrell.
Another challenge that daycare centers in West Texas are facing is the inability to hire anyone. This is because employees are required to be fingerprinted by the state through one company, and that company has all of their facilities shut down in West Texas.
Even before the green light was given on Monday, Odessa daycares have been taking care of essential workers' children but with fewer kids after a request from the Mayor.
On the other hand, Midland daycares were not limited to the amount of essential workers' children they could take in. They could take up as many kids as they were allowed to legally have in their facility.
Now with the governor's new order, they have to reduce the number of children they can care for.
Gary Lane, the owner of Envirokids in Midland, is trying to ease parents into the changes this week instead of throwing all the new rules at them at once.
Lane knows that these changes will result in the center losing 30-40% of their revenue.
"Now when you look at how many child care possible spaces were available and then the state cuts that down by 30-40 percent per child care center, what are these families supposed to do?" questioned Lane.
Lane also told NewsWest 9 that in the last two days he's had to turn away more than 15 children that needed child care, agreeing with Terrell that child care is already scarce and could get worse for our area.
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