On Tuesday, Issac Benson crouched down to help his two-year-old son Silas take off tiny purple rain boots. Then he scooped Silas up and carried him through the doorway of a classroom at Juneau’s former Floyd Dryden Middle School.
“I’m back,” Silas Benson said, as he entered a room full of other toddlers. But he seemed shy and confused as he looked around. Silas has been coming to this day care since he was just a baby, but the room, with its soft rugs and bins of toys, was unfamiliar.
“Let’s ease our way back in, it’s okay,” Issac Benson said. “I know it’s a big transition and change, isn’t it?”
The Bensons’ regular day care, Glacier Valley Kids, flooded during last week’s record-breaking glacial outburst. Flood waters rose up to their house too.
“We stayed up all night and watched it happen, and luckily we were just high enough to not get totally inundated,” Issac Benson said. “It was still really scary.”
Their garage and crawlspace took on water. The family spent the week drying things out and helping their neighbors who were worse off, all while juggling other responsibilities. Issac Benson said it was nice to spend time with Silas at home, but seeing the Glacier Valley Kids staff on Tuesday morning was a relief.
“My wife and I were trying to still work full-time and full-time parent and I mean, those things are incongruent, right?” he said. “Without day care, without them, our lives don’t really function.”
The opening day of this emergency child care center marks some return to normalcy for Benson and the other parents. It’s a big day for child care provider Carolina Sekona too. She’s been running Glacier Valley Kids, a state licensed day care for children under five years old, out of her home on Emily Way for years.
Last week, more than two feet of water surged in and soaked wooden furniture, blankets, rugs, toys and stuffed animals. At least half of the stuff had to be thrown away, and it was clear that the house itself was uninhabitable.
“I was crying, I didn’t know what was going on, I didn’t know what we were going to do,” Sekona said. “All I could see was my home destroyed, and my child care destroyed. And I knew it was going to be months before that could be built back up.”
It looked like Glacier Valley Kids was going to be out of commission. That wasn’t an option, said Blue Shibler, the executive director of The Southeast Alaska Association for the Education of Young Children, a nonprofit focused on supporting early childhood caregivers and educators.
“In general, we can’t afford to lose any child care spaces. There aren’t any open spaces in child care programs,” she said.
Parents that rely on Sekona have nowhere else to go. Child care in Juneau is stretched thin under normal circumstances, and even before the flood Sekona was turning parents away. She cares for twelve Juneau children, and she had at least twelve more families on her waitlist.
“If she wasn’t able to reopen, that would be 12 families that had to leave the workforce,” Shibler said. “That’s all there is to it.”
So Shibler’s agency pitched in some emergency money to replace the toys and other supplies. Sekona picked out a new plush campfire and a miniature wooden kitchen playset, among other things. Other day cares and schools around town donated cubbies, bookshelves, books and spare toys.
And the City and Borough of Juneau offered up the former Floyd Dryden Middle School building, which served as an emergency shelter for people who evacuated their flooded homes just last week. Then Alaska Department of Health and Social Services issued Sekona a temporary license to set up shop there.
She was grateful that it all came together so quickly.
“I need to be back at work. I have a family to support,” Sekona said.
Sekona is a single mom of four. Luckily, she moved her family into a new house this summer, one that wasn’t touched by rising water. But the house that flooded supported Sekona’s livelihood, and that of the three people she employs.
Over the weekend, they transformed two of the school’s empty classrooms. One is for mealtime and play. The other is for movies and naptime. Ever since the school building was vacated this spring, the city has been eyeing it for child care, so Glacier Valley Kids will be a trial run.
From one side of the room, Sekona watched the kids as they explored and rediscovered some of the familiar things that she was able to salvage.
A few favorite toys were spared by high shelves. The plastic tables and chairs that were designed to withstand toddlers held up pretty well against flood waters too. And on one wall, there’s a painting of a smiling lion with a rainbow mane. Sekona stopped by her gutted house on Emily Way to retrieve it.
“The kids are so visual,” Sekona said. “They’ll see it. They’ll remember: this is us.”
