Licenses and Incompetent Bunglers

Running the site I run requires us to license through the state of Oregon.

We have a ton of rules and regulations, most of which are designed for the safety of children, although I have to admit that some of those requirements do nothing for kids. Instead they're designed to enrich various players in the big game.

The requirement that I have a food handler's card, for example. It costs me 10 bucks every two years and enriches the Oregon Restaurant Association. I don't take the course, I skip to the end and take the test. When I do that and miss some of the answers, the test very considerately tells me where I went wrong. Then I go back and fix my answers and pass the test.

Knowing what temperature to serve chicken, learning to store the rat poison away from food prep areas and knowing the safety zone around the deep fryer are all very valuable bits of information for a daycare provider, right?

Stupidity. Bureaucratic bullshit.

I don't cook or prepare food. I serve packaged snacks. Crackers and applesauce and granola bars. None of them are anywhere near chicken during snack time, at least as far as I know. Perhaps some raw chickens sneak in during the day and rub their juicy bits all over the granola, but I've never seen it happen.

There isn't a person to call or write to or email to complain about that ridiculous requirement.

No one cares, they're getting 10 bucks from every day care worker in the state every two years.
That's a whole lotta tens.
They're certainly not interested in having their chicken gravy train derailed.

There is an extensive list of the things we need to have on site from parental notification paperwork ("We are closed on the following days") to a snack menu and a fire drill record.

One of the 'you must have this on hand' rules is a box of blocks.
Never mind that I have a ton of things for my kids. Must have blocks.

Well, okay then. It doesn't specify how many or what kind, so I have a set I found at Goodwill that are fancy shapes with some wood burned windows and doors.

They're for castle building and they fit in one of the smaller bins on the game cart. My young humans don't show much interest in building with blocks, we have so many other things to do. But as required, we have them in our supplies, taking up space I don't necessarily wish to give them.

I did have a giant plastic bin full of regular blocks, but last week I gave it to my friend Nicole for her baby boy. They were originally mine, by the way. The blocks belonged to both my children in turn. I didn't steal them from my employer. Not sure why I feel the need to let you know, but there it is.

My license also requires first aid supplies. The 'must have' is a minimal kit, though. Designed for skinned elbows and making sure a kid's temperature isn't too high. There's one of those thin little CPR barriers. Bandages. A thermometer and covers for it, plastic gloves and a flashlight. Hard to believe, but that's it.

My first aid kit has more. That little CPR barrier?  I bought one of the good ones. Also a package of sanitary napkins (good for compresses, although the only times I've had to use them it's been for their intended purpose) and things like spare tee shirts and a roll of garbage bags for wet or bloody clothing. I have a space blanket, too.

Real tweezers instead of those crappy plastic ones they issued to us.

It's also a bug out bag. Parent contact information, a couple small toys, some crayons and paper and scissors. Granola bars. If we have to evacuate we'd at least have something to do for awhile.

The point is, a day care license requires a facility or program to have certain things, including qualified staff. And if you're qualified staff with several years of experience, you do a little extra, like the bug out bag, for example. Because stuff happens fast and emergencies aren't always small and easily managed.

But. My little program is not the only program in our school. Like so many other schools in our area, they host a 'free' (taxpayer funded) program, SUN.
An acronym for Schools Uniting Neighborhoods. In PPS, it's supported by several different organizations, but I don't think any of them really know what SUN does/doesn't do with regards to child safety.

They're not required to license, although I'm sure most of the parents who allow their children to attend these programs have no idea they're not attending a licensed program. They don't advertise it like that.

The SUN program doesn't pay very well. The head of the program in our school makes less than I do and she has to do a whole lot more than I to earn that money. She has a constantly changing staff. They will hire almost any warm body. They don't have to background check or follow any rules when it comes to who they hire. If you think that means they hire people who might not be very good at the job, you're right. It's possible they're incompetent. It's possible the children they're responsible for aren't in the best hands.
It's a fact they're not so great at keeping things under control, too.

Example:
One of the things I purchased with the grant money were five flip top tables. We can't eat in our classroom, the floor is carpeted. Leaving crackers and granola bars and squashy peach pieces from those little plastic bowls all ground into the carpeting in a classroom is not a thing that looks professional.
It's shitty manners.

So I move our tables out into the hallway while we're setting up. After the halls have cleared, I go out and set them up and wipe them with the disinfectant stuff we use on tables.

Last week I had them all set up in a row, ready for snacks. I heard a bunch of kids laughing in the hallway and looked out to see MY tables with kids sitting and lying on them while their handler stood there only a couple feet away, watching them do it.

I was so pissed off. I went out into the hallway and said, "GET off my tables! I just washed those for snack time and now they have your butts all over them! I don't want to serve snacks to people on tables that you've been sitting on. And they're not your tables!"

Then I repeated a line that I use all the time with my own kids, "If it's not yours, don't touch it!"

The doofus who was supposed to be in charge looked at me stupidly, then seemed to get a glimmer of what was wrong and half-heartedly told the kids to get off the table and they all wandered away toward the cafeteria.

To his credit, he came back in a minute with a bottle of spray disinfectant and some paper towels and wiped the tables off.

After the way I reacted, the fact that I found the person in charge and told her in very clear terms how unprofessional I found the incident, I doubt it will happen again. I also went to the principal and let her know.

One of the kids in SUN has special needs. He's young (first grade) and hasn't learned even rudimentary self control. He wanders away from the program at least twice a week.

He just walks into my program on some of those occasions. Parks his butt on the rug next to the kids who are playing with LEGO and ignores my, "Hey Buddy, I know your class is down the hall, can I walk you back?"

It's another mark against SUN that it's sometimes three or four minutes before they come and carry off their wayward son.

Thursday we were outside and the little guy came barreling out the doors, down the stairs and took off across the playground.

I tried to head him off, but he ignored me and just kept running.

A couple SUN staff came out a minute or so later (Seriously... at least a minute before someone came out to get him. Really?) Holy hell, what if we hadn't been out there to keep an eye on where he went? He's SIX. Small and could be easily carried off.
What.
The.
Fuck.

There's more. Last week was the Scholastic Book Fair at our school. There were strangers in the building from the close of school until 5:30. They were shopping at the book fair or volunteer staffing the book fair.

SUN had the back door of the school PROPPED OPEN and they were letting people wander in through the back doors. Not escorting them through the building, not vetting them in any way. They looked okay, people with kids and strollers and an earnest face, but our school is a locked facility. Protocol said that all guests who were coming to the book fair needed to use the front door, be buzzed in by school staff and leave by the same route. You'd think that would be obvious, and with the things that are happening in our public schools with crazy people getting in, people who are working in the building might be a teeny bit more vigilant.

Did I go to the principal and comment? Yes. Yes I did.
I may have mentioned to her that I'm not a SUN school fan because with one exception, every SUN program I've seen over the years has had the same haphazard approach to child and building safety.

Did she get it? Possibly. But she's not going to toss them out. Too bad, as they really shouldn't be running programs if that's the best they can do.

Here's the scary/funny thing. The CEO of our non-profit organization (we do all kinds of things, not just child care) thinks that 'licensing is unnecessary' and would like all our programs to stop licensing.

Since DHS won't pay fees for low-income kids unless the program is licensed, I'm not sure we'll ever get to that point.

Meanwhile, being licensed is no guarantee of professionalism or expertise, but it beats the hell out of SUN.