Anne Halsall
Anne Halsall is Chief Product & Technology Officer (CPTO) and co-founder of Winnie. Anne leads product and technology at Winnie, including AI, platform and data.
When the first wave of shutdowns began, I had just given birth to my third child. She was still in the hospital when I got word that the schools were closing and I was now on the hook to homeschool a 5 and 7 year old for the remainder of the year.
I’m not the best teacher but at least my assistant is cute.
One thing became painfully clear to me over the following months: working parents were really screwed, and we had to do something about it.
The team at Winnie, a marketplace for parents to find preschools and daycares near them, has been hard at work supporting parents through the pandemic. We launched an emergency child care search which has helped over 40,000 essential workers find care. We added safety data to our child care pages to help parents make more informed choices.
When we learned that many school districts — including some of the biggest in the country — would not have students onsite this fall, we turned our attention to the next big problem: care for school age children.
Building a solution for the 1% does not align with our vision of quality, accessible child care for everyone.
We considered dozens of solutions, including the much-debated “learning pod” idea in which small groups of parents hire a private teacher. But while this may work for some families, it won’t for most — even putting aside complexity and cost, parents’ concern for safety has driven them to exclude children of essential workers. The equity issues are painfully clear, and building a solution for the 1% does not align with our vision of quality, accessible child care for everyone.
So instead we turned to Winnie's own network of group care providers — the largest in the United States — and asked them: can you help with the kids doing school online this year?
The answer was a resounding yes.
We found the 99% solution right in our own community, and now we're bringing it to yours.
Over 75% of the eligible providers on our platform said they would provide this service in the coming fall. They range from small home-based programs run by former teachers to established centers building out computer labs to support distance learning. Together, they amount to enough capacity to care for over one million kids.
It was a lightning bolt moment. There are 200K licensed providers on Winnie — all are regulated, background checked and vaccinated, and most have already reopened with strict protocols for cleaning, masking and distancing. Additionally, many are set up to accept subsidies and meal programs, making them more accessible to families in need.
We found the 99% solution right in our own community, and now we’re bringing it to yours.
Starting today, parents can visit winnie.com/school-care and search by zip code to find local providers that offer services for school age kids, including care, homeschooling, and distance learning support. Providers can update their Winnie page to denote whether they have availability and can support online schooling in their programs.
If you have questions, comments or ideas to share, please reach out to us at hello@winnie.com.
