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Faced with on-and-off closures, losing clients due to families’ changing financial circumstances, and complying with sometimes costly safety mandates, many day cares and preschools that were already operating on thin margins have been pushed to the brink of financial catastrophe.
Now, some home-based child care providers in L.A. are facing yet another hurdle, reports my colleague Mariana Dale —Support for LAist comes fromFor context, a 2017 report found that family child care providers in L.A. County made an average of $11.73 an hour. That means a bill for $500 could be the difference between staying open and closing for good.
Diana Mangioglu, L.A.’s Office of Finance Director and City Treasurer, said that the bills were sent in error due in part to staffing shortages caused by pandemic-prompted cutbacks.“Something that could have taken us five minutes to correct, you know, is now taking us several days to perhaps implement,” she said.The city is apparently only sending refunds to those who request them, and some providers have reported receiving failure-to-pay notices with additional fines.
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