Patricia Wyman knows the panic of snow days.

As a grandmother, she’s usually the one her son and daughter-in-law call when their 2-year-old’s day are center closes. Sometimes she can take the child. But sometimes she can’t. So when day care closes, her family’s world is turned upside down. Everyone gets caught in the frantic, last-minute, middle-of-a-snow-storm hustle to find care for the toddler. Inevitably, someone has to miss work.

It’s happened so often this winter that Wyman’s lost count.

“How often does it snow?” she asked.

It’s a common problem for Maine families in the winter. Do you stay home and risk losing pay, if not your job? Or do you work, scrambling to find emergency child care and paying that day for both regular day care and the backup?

Families call the choice agonizing.

Day care providers say their choice – to open or close, risk safety or inconvenience parents – isn’t much easier.

“It’s the bane of my existence to cancel a classroom where parents need to go to work,” said Estelle Rubinstein, executive director of Androscoggin Head Start.

With at least 19 plowable storms and more than 100 inches of snow in Lewiston this season, both sides have had a tough winter.

Of the 21 biggest child-care centers and programs in Androscoggin, Oxford and Franklin counties, 12 have closed at least twice this winter. Of those, five have closed a half dozen times or more. Five of the 21 centers have also shut down early at least three times this season.

Most – 80 percent – require parents to pay for the day, even if the center is closed.

Wyman and her family have had to deal with it all: full closures, early closures and snow days with payment required.

“I’m not happy with the way day cares in general are run. They’re supposed to be a business. When it snows they don’t close down where I work,” Wyman said. “And if they want to close, they shouldn’t be charging the parents.”

“Marie” knows exactly how Wyman feels. Her toddler’s Lewiston-area day care center has closed early or altogether at least 10 times this year, she said – including four times over a week-and-a-half period in February. With no family in the area and no emergency back up child care, she’s had to leave her job at a local hospital every time her day care shut down because of bad weather or because too few children showed up for the day.

“It’s starting to really affect my work,” said Marie, who asked to remain anonymous because she feared conflict with her day-care center.

Marie is required to pay nearly $120 a week whether her center is open or not. But it’s the inconvenience that riles her most, especially since she chose her center in part because it all but guaranteed child care during snow storms.

“The first thing I asked them, one of the big deals was do you close on snow days, do you close every time it snows, how often? They said ‘We never close.’ They said ‘We even have a back up generator in case of an electric failure.’ I was very impressed with that,” she said.

But when the center’s electricity went out recently, employees didn’t know how to run the generator.

Marie’s employer has been understanding about the situation. However, with Marie at least 10 days absent, late or forced to leave early, that understanding is starting to wear thin.

“My managers want me to stay, but they’ve basically said ‘You’ve got to find more reliable child care. We can’t afford to have you missing all these days,'” she said. “And I agree. It’s embarrassing. I never missed a day before I had a kid.”

Some child-care providers can’t understand what others in their business are thinking when they close.

In Auburn, Patty Hackett-Mason often takes in some of the kids left stranded by other day-care programs during snow storms. In 20 years, she said, her home-based Lollipop Land Day Care has only closed for three days, and that was when she didn’t have electricity during the Ice Storm of ’98.

“As a (former) nurse I can relate to what parents are going through. It doesn’t matter what the weather is, you need to work,” she said.

She believes more day-care programs are closing for snow days than they used to. She calls it “selfish.”

“It’s that immediate self-gratification thing,” she said. “They’re thinking ‘I’m going to get paid anyway. It’s a day to close.'”

Home-based day-care providers like Hackett-Mason admit it’s easy for them to stay open. They generally have few if any employees to consider, and the owner’s commute is nothing. But some of the largest day-care centers in the tri-county area have also found a way to stay open – asking administrators to cover for staff members who can’t get in, requiring employees to come in no matter what, or juggling staff schedules.

In Turner, Kids Camp Learning Centers I and II have closed only once this year, when ice covered the roads.

“We do have a snow day policy,” said director Tina Goodwin. “We very, very rarely use it.”

Day-care providers say they worry over the decision to close.

At Androscoggin County Head Start, which offers full-time day care and a part-time Head Start program, Rubinstein talks to Lewiston schools’ transportation director and a public works plow driver about conditions. Staff members are willing to walk to work, she said, but she worries about the commute of parents and children. She’s closed six or seven times this year.

“It’s not an easy decision. I have to live with whatever I have to do,” Rubinstein said.

At some centers, families complain loudly – and often – about closures. At others, they’re silent.

“Our families have been pretty understanding. They understand our priorities, one, are to keep staff safe. I have staff that commute 45 minutes to work here,” said Michelle Hathaway, director of the Lewiston-based Margaret Murphy Center for Children, which has closed seven times this winter. “And they also know that we want kids to be safe and off the roads and we don’t want to worry about losing power and closing mid-day.”

But the parents who are most vocally gleeful are those whose centers stay open.

“It’s been incredible. It’s been a really good experience,” said Leah Weston, whose 2-year-old son attends Norway’s Community Child Care Center, which has only closed completely once and shut down early once this winter. “We’ve been lucky.”

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