THE SPILL HITS HOME
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Anchorage Daily News (AK)-June 15, 1989
Author/Byline: DUSTY RHODES
Daily News reporter
Staff
Edition: Final
Section: Lifestyles
Page: E1
Billy Smith has acquired a pintsized, towheaded shadow, a boy who's 2 years old. He's a newcomer at Teddy Bear Day Care in Valdez, and he has latched onto Smith, the owner.
"He's never been in day care before," Smith says, "and now he's here about 10 hours a day. His dad's working the spill, and his mom took a job in town. It's taking him awhile to adjust."
The child follows him everywhere, naps by his desk, rides with him every time he goes to the bank.
But ask Smith the boy's name, and he pauses, looking down at the child's upturned smile. "It's J.B.," Smith says. No, that doesn't sound right. He decides it's B.J. Later, after consulting the sign-in sheet, Smith comes up with his bantam shadow's true name: P.J. Turner.
Smith could be forgiven for this lapse. Like many daycare workers in communities around Prince William Sound, he is feeling the strain of the oil spill.
Ever since the March 24 disaster, but especially since the school year ended and fishing season opened, daycare centers around the Sound have been battling a two-headed monster: They've watched enrollment increase, as parents took high-paying oil spill cleanup jobs, and they've watched staffs dwindle, as lowpaid daycare workers were likewise lured to the lucrative cleanup jobs or left through normal attrition. Some daycare centers were left with more children than ever and fewer adults to take care of them.
Because state regulations require daycare centers to maintain prescribed staff-to-child ratios, centers suffering staff shortages must find new workers or choose among operating illegally, turning kids away or shutting down. At least three centers have asked Exxon for help. The corporation's response varied from no aid to some financial assistance for a Valdez center and a onetime grant to a only after the center's director submitted numerous proposals and had government officials intervene on her behalf.
Exxon recently told the centers not to expect further financial help. Instead, the company plans to alleviate daycare and other non-cleanup labor shortages by establishing a recruiting program that may reach Outside for workers willing to accept "normal wages," says Monte Taylor, Exxon's community liaison manager for Valdez. But this plan doesn't satisfy some daycare operators.
"The kind of people they attract may not be the kind of people you'd want taking care of kids," says Smith.
Though several centers report no problems with enrollment increases or staff shortages, the situation has already caused one daycare center to close and has threatened others. Bonnie Stevens, who Day Care center in Seward, closed May 5 after most of her employees took jobs with Veco, the company Exxon has contracted to clean up the spill.
In Valdez, Jackie Gunion, who closes her Ptarmigan Tot Drop preschool every summer, was so strained by staff shortages during April and May that she is already worrying about reopening in September. And in Cordova last week, Jacqueline Fowler was so short of staff she was preparing to close the Odiak Child Development Center, which she directs.
To compound the problem, some kids left in daycare centers are showing signs of stress. Parents, whether working on the spill or in town jobs, are generally working longer hours. Some parents are devoting less time to their children, while others make time by keeping their kids up later at night, daycare workers say. Either way, children arrive at daycare centers frustrated or tired, and there they are cared for by adults who, also working overtime, may feel equally irritable.
"I've been on serious burnout a couple of times," Fowler says. "One night I went to bed crying and I literally woke up the next morning crying."
Fowler says her center is experiencing the highest enrollment in its history. She was taking in an average of 44 full-time children per day in April, compared to 32 during the same month last year.
At the same time, Fowler has lost nine employees, four directly to cleanup work. She has found some new workers, but it takes time to train them. Last week she was forced to take the cook, the bookkeeper and herself away from regular duties to work with the children.
"If someone calls in sick, we're dead," she says.
All around her, Fowler sees stress in overworked parents, in her inexperienced workers, in herself and in the kids.
"We have one little boy, 31/2 years old, who has started wetting his pants again," Fowler says. "And every time he does, he looks up and says, "Mommy and Daddy on the boat?'
"And the best way to address stress is to create a closer bond between the caregiver and the child," Fowler says with a rueful laugh.
In Valdez, Jackie Gunion is still recovering from that same sort of stress. She says she tolerated the post-spill strain only because she takes summers off.
"I just kept saying, "We can do it,' because we only had two months left," Gunion says.
She lost five employees to the cleanup, including one woman who got Veco's call at the center in the middle of her shift and walked out.
"She said, "I'm going to work on the rocks. I'll be back in a couple of weeks if you want me to work.' And I turned around and just said, "Don't bother.' I was rude," Gunion says. "I've become real rude. And that's not my nature."
Another employee quit because of exhaustion.
"She just gave out, got tired of it," says Gunion, who had raised the woman's pay from $5.25 to $7 an hour a week earlier.
Gunion admits that the strain has affected the quality of care she provides. Her preschool program, she says, deteriorated to simply "supervised play."
"We got to where we didn't even want to look at them (the children), because they were always so whiny and tired," she says.
Bonnie Stevens, of Sunshine Day Care in Seward, had two employees quit without notice to take higher-paying Veco jobs. Then she lost two new recruits one worked a single day to Veco.
On April 19, she filed a claim with Exxon, asking the oil company to supply her with two workers on their $16.69-an-hour payroll. The company refused, and Stevens closed Sunshine Day Care on May 5.
She still worries about the children she turned away. "I felt like it was traumatizing the kids," she says.
In Valdez, Billy Smith has experienced an increase in enrollment at his Teddy Bear Day Care and lost three employees since the spill. In May, he approached his licensed capacity of 49 and worried that he might have to start turning away children.
But Smith has no complaints. For one thing, he has loyal workers including his daughter, home from college, and her best friend. For another, unlike other daycare centers, Teddy Bear has received significant financial aid from Exxon since the early days of the spill.
Smith says Exxon approached him requesting that he extend his hours of operation in order to accommodate children of people working in the bird and otter rescue centers. So Smith kept his center open 6 a.m. to midnight seven days a week. In return, Exxon gave him money to pay his employees night and weekend wages equivalent to the $16.69 an hour earned by bird and otter rescuers.
"That was why I was able to keep my workers as long as I did," Smith says.
That deal ended May 22, but within a week, Smith had another deal with Exxon. On May 28, he submitted a proposal asking for a wage differential to bring his workers' wages up to $16.69 an hour, the rate Veco pays.
"They said they'd do something, and then they came over and we sat down and worked it out. They said, "What, realistically, can you keep your staff for?' I told them I thought I could keep staff with a $4 an hour raise," Smith says. He won't say what his employees earn normally.
On June 7, he received a letter from Exxon promising a payment of $9,000 "to ease the impact of the oil spill on your Teddy Bear Day Care operation during the month of June 1989."
Fowler, at Odiak in Cordova, says she sent Exxon several proposals for such grants. She didn't get a positive response until Sen. Frank Murkowski and Lt. Gov. Steve McAlpine starting calling Exxon for her.
Last week, Exxon's Valdez liaison, Taylor, told Fowler he would send Odiak a onetime payment of $18,000 a sum Fowler believes would last the daycare center one month.
But she hasn't seen the money yet. Instead of sending the check directly to the center, Exxon sent it to the city of Cordova. Though Taylor says he recommended Odiak receive the full amount, Fowler says the city isn't taking Taylor's suggestion. Instead, she is left standing in line with other Cordova causes, begging for a piece of the grant she negotiated herself.
"I don't know if I'll get it," she says. "It's like they took a piece of raw meat and threw it in the middle of a pack of hungry dogs."
Record Number: 208447
Copyright (c) 1989, Anchorage Daily News