I don't own a daycare (thought about opening one last year). We live in California (Orange county), which is under similar shelter in place orders. We pay ~$2k/month for our 13-month daughter. Our daycare is a chain and not an in-home or small center.

Our daycare closed this week and next. This was communicated to us right before more formal government guidance were released, and there's just a note that we'll figure out billing later. We're not sure what happens after next week and I'm sure our daycare doesn't either. We're OK with that for now as we love our teachers and wouldn't want them to not be paid during this time. But we also wouldn't want to continue in our present situation for too long.

My wife and I are now both working from home, and it's a challenge. We're lucky our income isn't affected but we also have demanding jobs. We're currently taking turns using PTO and have arranged for a nanny a few days a week. We're essentially paying an extra $500-$600 per week for supplemental daycare.

Of course we want to support our daycare but this is a lot of extra spending on our end for what is essentially services not rendered. We're willing to wait until end of the month to reevaluate, but if the daycare will be closed for another month, I'm not sure we'll be willing to keep paying full tuition. It'll depend on how much, and for how long.

When we discussed this, we thought about a few angles: Is there loss of use insurance for a business? Will there be assistance from the government for businesses like these that are hard hit? We don't know how we'll handle this but thought I'd share a perspective from the parent/consumer side. It isn't like we're chilling out at home - we're also frustrated trying to figure out our new normal.

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