RICHMOND, Ky. (LEX 18) — After shutting down due to COVID-19 cases among staff members, a Richmond daycare learning facility is re-opening its doors.
Over the past two weeks, the LaFontaine Early Learning had two employees test positive for COVID-19. The summer camp program at LaFontaine Preperatory School had three employees test positive.
The center temporarily closed to keep everyone safe, and do a deep cleaning, and are now reopening.
Co-founder Gus LaFontaine says he’s lucky they caught it early before it spread to any of their students.
“In the moment, this was a great challenge it caused a lot of anxiety between us and our families. But now that things have settled down and we can look back. It was a really positive thing for our organization because it happened in such a small setting we were able to control it relatively easy," said LaFontaine.
Now LaFontaine says he will use this as a learning experience going forward.
He says the key is to be transparent, and although closing for a period impacted his business it’s more important to keep their kids and families safe.
“There’s a great financial impact on the business. That's just the environment we are in. We expected if this happened, it would be a financial hit to our business. But we took the actions we did to, number one, protect our students and our families so the harm it caused our businesses financially was secondary to promoting the safety and well being of our kids and families," said LaFontaine.
