The first comprehensive overhaul in 45 years of the state's regulations of child-care centers cleared its final hurdle Wednesday and will be implemented this spring.
On Wednesday, with little discussion, the Administrative Rules and Regulations Subcommittee of the Arkansas Legislative Council took only a few minutes to officially review the hundreds of pages of regulations that set minimum licensing requirements for child-care, home day-care and out-of-school-time facilities.
The hundreds of changes -- which include educational requirements for center directors, stricter background checks for staff members, behavior-chart uses, and a prohibition on wading pools -- took nearly two years, three legislative reviews and six heavily attended public hearings that generated more than 600 public comments.
"The response to our requests for public comment was unprecedented and an absolutely critical part of developing the new regulations," Department of Human Services spokesman Amy Webb said. "The feedback allowed us to identify language that needed clarification, standards that we could compromise on and areas where everyone agreed it was time to make improvements so our kids will be ready for school."
The Child Care and Early Childhood Education Division will now provide a "final filing" to be kept on record with the Legislature, the State Library and the secretary of state's office.
The regulations will be mass printed and mailed to all licensed child-care facilities and programs in the state "sometime in mid- to late January, Webb said. The department also will begin training its staff on how to enforce the new regulations.
Enforcement will not begin immediately, Webb said.
"These are substantive changes, so we want to give centers plenty of time to get comfortable with the new regulations, get any additional training required and ask for any technical assistance from us that might be needed," she said. "Enforcement officially begins 60 days after centers receive the new regulations. There will not be new or special monitoring visits to ensure compliance immediately. Instead, enforcement of the new regulations will be part of our regular monitoring process."
Throughout the overhaul process, proposed changes elicited powerful responses, both positive and negative, from child-care providers and state leaders. Numerous child-care providers said the regulations would require increases in already high day-care rates, possibly close some centers and add a financial burden to day-cares' already high costs and low profits.
"Please don't let some of these regulations stand as they are, because these changes will prohibit good family child care providers from staying in business. This type of over-regulation will push more people who take care of children underground and move the state of child care here in Arkansas twenty years backwards," said Cheryl Stapf in a letter to the department.
Carol Carney, a child-care provider in Northwest Arkansas, told the department that child-care regulations directly affect the economic health of the state.
"We are not highly paid but we are the door, where parents can be in the work force in our communities," she wrote.
Several of the hundreds of public comments expressed support for the changes and thanked the department for enacting new regulations.
Christopher Lloyd, an assistant professor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock Graduate School of Social Work, said he "strongly" supports the changes.
"Some are simply updates and minor re-wordings to clarify and strengthen existing rules. But some, including such changes as reducing staff to child ratios and requiring outdoor free play, are deeply rooted in the research literature as important for healthy child development. Implementing these rules is an important step towards insuring that every child in Arkansas has the benefit of quality early child care," Lloyd wrote.
Staff-to-child ratios
For the first time since the state passed legislation for minimum day-care licensing requirements in 1969, the changes include a reduction in the number of children each staff member can care for at a time. Arkansas is one of only five states with a ratio of one staff member to six infants.
The new regulations call for staff-to-child ratios to be altered as follows:
• From one staff member for every six children to one staff member for every five children, ages newborn to 18 months.
• From one staff member for every nine children to one staff member for every eight children, ages 18 months to 36 months.
• From one staff member for every 20 children to one staff member for every 18 children, who are kindergarten age and older.
Shirley Waire, who has operated Shirley's Mother Goose day care in Cabot since 1992, told the department that the ratio changes were "just not practical in our current economic climate and if made will highly alter infant day care availability."
"In private centers such as mine, I would be forced to shut down my infant program entirely to cut costs (employees, wages, etc). As it stands, the current 1:6 ratio is difficult enough to maintain without charging astronomical prices for infant care. I could shut my infant program down right now (with the current 1:6 ratio) and be money ahead," Waire wrote.
Michell Justus told the department in a letter that she strongly supports the change in staff-to-child ratios.
"As a mother who has volunteered to help in my children's classrooms I understand how difficult it can be to care for numerous children at one time," she wrote. "I believe that the reduction in the staff to child ratio will result in better care for our children and allow child care staff more opportunities for one-on-one care with our children."
Allowable criminal offenses
The final regulations also allow individuals convicted of specific nonviolent offenses -- including prostitution and patronage of prostitutes -- to work at child-care facilities if the individuals are granted waivers by the state before employment.
A waiver can be approved if the individual has completed probation or parole supervision; has paid all court-ordered fees, fines and restitution; and has fully complied with all court orders pertaining to the conviction or plea.
The waiver -- which cannot be transferred to another licensed facility -- can be revoked if, after employment, the individual is found guilty of any of the above offenses or has been placed on a central registry for child or adult maltreatment.
Justus -- the parent who supported staff-to-child ratios -- said in a letter to the department that parents should at least be notified that the child-care facility is hiring someone who has a criminal history.
"As a mother it is concerning to me that a child care center can hire someone with a previous conviction (even after the specified time period) especially convictions such as theft by receiving or prostitution," Justus wrote.
Other regulations
Higher education requirements for child-care-center leaders, restrictions on videotaping of children, the use of helmets on certain playground equipment and the prohibition of ball pits, trampolines and wading pools are just some of the hundreds of changes child-care providers will see in the new regulations.
Originally, the proposed changes required that all day-care-center directors hold bachelor's degrees, but the state reached a compromise after numerous complaints and concerns were received from day-care owners and state legislators.
(Currently, a bachelor's degree is not required if the director has at least a high school diploma or a GED certificate, along with four years of experience in a licensed child-care or elementary program).
Through the public hearing process, the bachelor's degree proposal was changed to require directors to hold associate's degrees in early childhood, child development or a related field, plus have six years of experience in early childhood education.
Another option is for directors to have eight years of experience in early childhood education and obtain within two years of employment one of the following: a child development associate credential, birth-to-pre-kindergarten credential, director's credential or the equivalent, or a technical certificate in early childhood education.
Individuals who have been employed as directors or site supervisors at any time before the changes are implemented will not be required to meet the new directors qualifications. These individuals can change employers after the new rules are enacted and still qualify as directors.
At Wednesday's legislative hearing, Rep. Kelley Linck, R-Yellville, House chairman of the Administrative Rules and Regulations Subcommittee of the Arkansas Legislative Council, asked David Griffin, associate director of Arkansas' Child Care and Early Childhood Education Division, about prohibiting the use of wading pools except for therapeutic use.
Griffin said there have been accidental drownings in the small plastic pools at some Arkansas day cares. He cited one case where a child fell facedown in a few inches of water and another child fell on top of him, resulting in a drowning.
Sen. Bruce Maloch, D-Magnolia, committee co-chairman, said Wednesday that he had received numerous complaints about the rules' negative impact on home-based child-care providers.
Griffin said only homes that care for six or more children would be required to be licensed. He also said significant changes were made to the original proposal after the department met with a group of in-home child-care providers who had submitted a petition from about 260 home centers.
"I personally would not like all these rules, but it sounds like you've gone through the correct process," Linck said.
A section on 12/04/2014