State Guidelines for Daycare
Some of the odder written rules caregivers must enforce.
Most state guidelines are clearly engineered for the protection of children, but there are other codes that seem to be made simply to make things more difficult.
Although varied by each state, every daycare is under the leadership of inspectors who enforce the daycare guidelines of the state where the daycare is located. Most of these laws make clear sense for the good of the children, in order to provide a safe and engaging environment. Some state guidelines though, make you pause and think, "huh?"
One such daycare guideline at my center is that we may not walk the kids past a certain area of the building. Our facility also houses a church, senior daycare, and an elementary school. As it has been built, different fire codes were in place and so we have a boiler room that is behind a door that the state deemed insufficient for the preschool-aged children to walk past. This means that we have to walk them around through the sanctuary of the church. As a staff, our position has always been that if a room is secure enough as a church to be assured of not exploding, then it should be secure enough for a child-care center. On the days that an event such as a funeral is taking place in the sanctuary when we are walking children to preschool or to the gym, we either walk outside and avoid the problem totally, or we walk past the door as a "field trip."
It is necessary to remember that codes often vary from state to state and that the anecdotal stories that I am writing of here are based upon my experience in Michigan. Another instance of these curious state guidelines is found in the number of children one teacher is allowed to have at a time. When we are inside, the rule is one teacher for every ten children age three and over. However, if we go outside, that ratio decreases to seven to one. We usually try to have two staff people on duty if we have more than seven children, but this also gets confusing when we have school-aged children, three and four year olds, and a couple two-year-olds. It is sometimes legal only for us to be inside, or legal for us to be in two separate groups.
Another small instance of this is found in the length of time we can use one of our basic snack items-- milk. When we open a jug of milk, we are required to write on the outside of the jug the date that we opened it, and the day that will fall 48 hours later. If it is past this date, we may not use the milk any longer-- even if the expiration date is still weeks away. We no longer open milk on Fridays because it will be unable to be used due to the weekend. One unexpected nice feature has been that teachers sometimes get to take milk home if the 48 hours have expired and the milk is still good.
If this article interests you, be sure to visit my blog article, Wacky State Guidelines
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