Every two weeks, Melissa Moody draws a little more money from her personal savings and puts it into the day care she’s been operating in Orange Beach, Ala. for the past 22 years.
Until the coronavirus epidemic, the Discovery Island Child Development Center was profitable, with employees who made well above minimum wage caring for about 74 children.
But then coronavirus hit, and Moody closed the center for about five weeks in the spring. She felt it wasn’t right to ask parents to continue paying, but that also meant there was no income to cover continuing expenses – rent on her cheerful blue building near the Gulf Coast, curriculum materials that were already ordered, food that had to be thrown out.
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