WEST LEBANON — YMCA Camp Coniston, which provides after-school care for about 100 children at elementary schools in Lebanon, Plainfield, and New London, informed families earlier this month the program will shut down indefinitely in April due to staffing shortages and the absence of a qualified program director.

“The truth is it’s hard to find somebody to work three hours a day,” Camp Coniston executive director John Tilley said in an interview Monday.

Meanwhile, parents are left scrambling to sort out how they will fill the gap between when their children get out of school and when their workdays end.

Colin Parker, of West Lebanon, sends his 8- and 10-year-olds to the YMCA after-school program at Mount Lebanon Elementary School four days a week, from the end of the school day at 3 p.m. until he picks them up after work around 5:30 p.m.

Parker anticipates he will have to rearrange his schedule if he can’t find another child-care option.

“It’s a small sample of the bigger picture in the Upper Valley,” Parker said, noting that he knows child care is in high demand and short supply for many local families.

“It’s really tough for families with two working parents,” he added.

In addition to the challenge of finding another care option, Parker said, his children also will miss attending the afterschool program.

“If we (ever) got there to pick them up early, they’d be sad because they wanted to stay,” he said.

Plainfield Elementary School parent Crystal Munsell has a daughter in kindergarten enrolled in the YMCA after-school program. Knowing that there was limited space in the program, Munsell and her husband put their daughter on the waitlist where she remained the entire summer leading up to her first year of school.

Now that her daughter has attended the after-school program for several months, Munsell was disappointed that it would be closing.

“We’re scrambling to try to find (another option),” she said.

With the YMCA program closing, Munsell has considered nannies, friends and family, and waitlists for other daycares in the area. She has posted on the Upper Valley Listserv, community Facebook page, and Care.com with no luck getting responses yet. Munsell’s other daughter, who is just 2 years old, can’t attend certain childcare programs because she is still too young. Her last resort is to ask her employer if she can work remotely so she can pick up her daughter from school every day.

“I think all of us are in the same situation,” she said, sympathizing with other Upper Valley families who have children.

A staff-to-student ratio of one to 10 and a site director of at least 21 years old are necessary in order for the YMCA after-school program to meet New Hampshire Childcare Licensing requirements. After losing several site coordinators and experiencing a high staff turnover rate, which led to unplanned closings 16 times within the past year, Tilley decided to end the program for good.

“Everybody’s in this shape,” he said. “COVID is certainly a major factor.”

Tilley said that another nonprofit is in contact with their partner schools in hopes of continuing to offer after-school care for children currently attending the YMCA program. The Camp Coniston summer program, Tilley said, will be fully staffed and operate as usual.

According to the Afterschool Alliance, for every child attending an after-school program in New Hampshire, another two children are waiting to be admitted to an available program. A 2020 survey in New Hampshire found that 67,312 children would have participated in an after-school program if one had been available to them, and 31% of parents reported that after-school programs are not available in their communities.

Winfried Feneberg, superintendent of the Kearsarge School District, said he recognizes that the loss of the after-school program at the Kearsarge Elementary School at New London will be difficult for parents.

“It’s regrettable that the program is terminated,” he said.

However, providing after-school care is not the school’s responsibility, Feneberg said, and they are not actively searching for an option to replace the current YMCA program. Still, he said he hopes another program might step up to the plate.

He noted that families may be interested in the Boys & Girls Clubs of Central New Hampshire, which recently opened a new location at the New London First Baptist Church. The $80 per week program is open to children in grades K-8 and attending students are bussed to the church after school lets out.

Elsewhere, Jack Finley, principal of Hanover Street School in Lebanon (another YMCA after-school program site), said in a Tuesday email: “We are looking into other options in an effort to support our families for the rest of the school year.”