ODESSA, Texas — Ector County ISD was approved for an emergency child care facility.
They'll be opening their doors for the first time Wednesday while following strict CDC guidelines.
"We are making plans to honor CDC guidelines, no more than ten bodies in a room in some cases that's 9 children and 1 adult on our child care child for infants and toddlers that's two adults with eight children," said Alivia Syverson, ECISD's Assistant Superintendent of Student and School Support.
The district put this child care center together specifically for the children of healthcare workers.
They've been working closely with HR departments at both Odessa hospitals to find out which families will benefit from the facility most.
"We want our healthcare workers to be at work helping us every day so we did wonder what we could do to help them be at work supporting us we know they all have children many of them attend our school district so we worked with them to put together child care so they didn't have to worry about their children being taken care of," Syverson said.
When parents come to drop their kids off come Wednesday they won't be allowed past the front office where every kid will get their temperature taken before heading to class.
In those classrooms, desks are spaced out as far as possible, and custodial staff has been disinfecting all of the rooms and everything in them.
"Our staff has all been issued PPE to wear, every staff member will wear a mask daily and were going to honor social distancing as much as possible without making them feel like this isn't a place to learn as play," Syverson said.
The child care facility is inside Zavala- technically there will be two child care operations under one roof.
One is the existing child care center for babies and infants and then the new emergency licensed side is for the older kids up to age 13.
Sylvia Duran Paula Dannheim, Erin Reddell, and Melissa Grizzell are the operations leaders who will be on-site at the facility every day.
It's a place for kids of healthcare workers to learn and play while their parents save lives.
ECISD applied for their child care license for the facility and they were approved in 24 hours.
They say State Rep. Brooks Landgraf helped them get past the red tape that was keeping them for being licensed.
I thought it was a great idea because there's this need and it didn't make sense that we had this tremendous resource that was available to our community but we couldn't unlock all of that potential or resource at a time when we desperately need it so being able to have this common-sense solution and it made perfect sense to me so I was very excited to be a part of this project," Landgraf said.
Landgraf also mentioned that he hopes this facility can serve as a blueprint if any other emergency child care facilities like this one are needed in the future.