My Parent Handbook clearly states that we are closed on the following
unpaid holidays:
New Year's
MLK
President's Day
Memorial Day
4th of July
Labor Day
Veteran's Day
Thanksgiving and the day after
Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and the day after
I also leave a list of these days on the inside of my front door year round. To ensure no one comes knocking on my day off, I leave a note on the outside of my front door a week before the holiday and it stays up until the morning I'm ready to open again.
I've opened my daycare, closed, had twins, and reopened a new daycare a couple years later, so I've had some time to play with the holidays option. The first time I opened, I took all holidays or the mon before or fri after off paid, and I took a week paid off for the week of Christmas and for the week of 4th of July. I found that around my vacations I would lose nearly every kid.
When I reopened a few years later, I took only about 4 days off a year and they were paid. Every holiday I worked I would end up with only 1 or 2 kids showing up, often late, and their parents were off for the day. To make it worse, they were almost always kids on subsidy that I would have gotten paid for even if they had been absent. I had a few snarky comments from parents for the 4 measly days a year I had off too because they had to pay when they couldn't attend.
Last month in Jan. I renewed our contracts and again am trying something new. This time we are closed for most all major holidays but they are unpaid. So far we've closed for 2 and are coming up on our 3rd holiday closure and no one has said anything bad. I don't feel bad for closing for a few extra holidays and the parents seem to like not having to pay.
