Concerned about lack of COVID precautions, Mesa County parents seek alternatives to local preschools

Oct 12, 2021

GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. — In spring of this year, Jeff Chrisler and Meredith Evans needed a place to satisfy the young and eager-to-play nature of their three-year-old daughter, Amelia. With a preschool just minutes away, it was initially an easy decision for the family. That was, until they received some unsettling news from the school.

Monument Preschool at Redlands United Methodist Church was highly recommended by Evans’ neighbors, and has even received a 5-star rating from the Colorado state quality rating process called Colorado Shines. But with Amelia already signed up for the spring semester, the couple still lacked assurance in regards to the school’s COVID-19 policy.

“We hadn't heard anything firm on what the school district was going to do, or what the preschool was going to do,” explained Evans, a physician at Juniper Family Medicine. “So I emailed my contact person and tried to get some information from her and received pretty vague responses at first that we weren't too excited about.”

The preschool, along with others that the family were considering for Amelia, was hesitant to release information about mask requirements or the vaccination status of the staff, claiming that answering such questions is violation of rights protected under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) which does not prevent anyone from asking questions about vaccination status.

One week before school was set to begin, Amelia was excited to play with children her age. It was at this time that Evans and Chrisler were notified of the preschool’s COVID-19 policy, which closely followed Mesa County School District 51’s Keeping Schools Open Plan. The plan does not require vaccines or mask-wearing for staff.

“They had their protocol for cleaning and hand-washing and all that stuff, which was great, but it just made us a bit uncomfortable and made us feel like we were putting Amelia in a place where they weren't doing a whole lot to protect her,” said Evans.

Rocky Mountain PBS reached out to Monument Preschool multiple times for comment, but has not heard back.

Amelia’s mother is well acquainted with the nature of the virus, and has tried to navigate her family through the pandemic with extreme caution. And while children are at far lower risk to get seriously ill with COVID-19, the highly contagious Delta variant has led to more cases among Colorado’s youth. Children ages nine and younger have accounted for about 5.5 percent of all of Colorado’s COVID-19 cases.

Mesa County was the first county in Colorado to detect the Delta variant; nearly every active COVID-19 case in Colorado is Delta, state data shows. The contagious variant and the poor vaccination rate in Mesa County (just 52 percent of Mesa County residents have at least one dose of the vaccine) are contributing factors to the steady rise in COVID-19 cases in the county. According to Mesa County Public Health, the seven-day average of new cases per day is currently 82, making this the third highest "peak" of the pandemic. Moreover, schools are the most common locations for current COVID-19 outbreaks in the county. More data is available here.

Evans, along with her husband, did not feel comfortable with the district's COVID-19 policies and sought to find a safer alternative for Amelia; they ended up enrolling Amelia in classes at the EUREKA! McConnell Science Museum.

Located steps away from Colorado Mesa University, the museum hosts a preschool that Chrisler and Evans thought would be perfect for their daughter. Not only are staff and visitors at the museum still required to wear masks inside the building, but they also told Evans that all but one faculty member at the museum had been vaccinated.

Unfortunately, Amelia was one year too young to enroll in EUREKA!’s Nest program, which is open to children ages four and up. Eager to find a safer environment for their girl, the family settled for Thursday camp sessions at the museum that would accept Amelia at her age, and typically has less than a dozen children in attendance.

“The first week that I picked her up, she wanted to stay - she was having such a blast and we just stayed in the science center and checked out a bunch of exhibits,” said Chrisler, “just seeing that they aligned really well with our belief of facts backed by science.”

Amelia particularly likes to play at a local water irrigation exhibit that demonstrates the dam system and energy uses of the Colorado River. While she may still be too young to understand the concept of hydroelectric power, Amelia does seem to understand caution for the pandemic.

It will still be some time before Amelia is admitted into EUREKA!’s Nest program, or for her to actually be required to wear a face covering at the museum (that also starts at age four). Encouraged by her parents to wear a face covering when in populated indoor places, Amelia has taken after her mother by espousing the importance of the COVID-19 vaccines.

“During dinner, Meredith will typically bring up being a family physician in town, and so Amelia also likes to emulate mommy,” said Chrisler. “So she'll say, ‘Oh, my day was tough too. I only got one person to go get vaccinated.”

For the latest COVID-19 statistics in Colorado, click here.

Matt Thornton is a multimedia journalist at Rocky Mountain PBS. He is based in Grand Junction. You can contact him at matthewthornton@rmpbs.org.