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Safety measures delayed for early learning centers

May 7, 2015
/ Reggie Dogan
/ education

Measures to improve the health and safety of children in Florida’s early learning centers will have to wait another year after legislation stalled in the Senate. Lawmakers abruptly ended their session last week before approving bills that would have made early learning centers safer, improved staffing and increased transparency. The House unanimously approved H.B. 7017 last month, but the Senate tabled S.B. 7006 because its members wanted to make some changes before sending it back to the House. Rep. Clay Ingram, R-Pensacola, said the bill was good policy and he hopes the Legislature will take it up again next year. “I see no reason not to do that,” Ingram said. "It mainly focused on protecting children. It’s all no-brainer stuff.” Bruce Watson, executive director of Early Learning Coalition of Escambia County, said he’s disappointed that the legislation didn’t make it out of the Senate. “This new bill was even better than last year’s bill because it added even more stringent health and safety requirements into it,” Watson said. “I don’t know why they sacrificed the opportunity to do the work that citizens voted for them to do.” If approved, the bills would have toughened standards unlicensed early learning centers that get state and federal funding for voluntary pre-kindergarten and school readiness programs must meet. Privately funded facilities would have been exempt from the new law. Those standards would include supervision, transportation, nutrition and personal screening. Those unlicensed centers would have to allow an annual inspection by the Department of Children and Families. Licensed facilities already are inspected by DCF several times annually and the reports are public record. The centers also would have to notify parents and guardians of health and safety violations found during inspections and clearly display citations they receive. Inspections now are posted on the agency’s website. Another provision would have required employees at the centers to be at least 18 years old and have a high school diploma or equivalent as of Jan. 1, 2017. All employees hired after Jan. 1, 2016, would need to complete infant and child first aid and CPR within the first 60 days of employment. This is the second year in a row that legislation regarding early learning provider health and safety hasn’t passed. Watson said he wants to see this bill passed because its sponsor for the past two years, Rep. Marlene O’Toole, R-Lady Lake, wanted to take on health and safety before moving on to quality program legislation. O’Toole’s goal was to pass legislation to improve early learning in three phases: administrative organization, health and safety and quality services. In 2013, lawmakers passed significant legislation to tackle the first phase, but they did nothing with the bills the next two years. “We put off a whole year of addressing the issue of quality,” Watson said. “How do we start holding our providers more accountable not just for the health and safety of our children, but for the quality of the educational materials and the quality of the care that they provide for these children that we don’t have yet?” Lawmakers are calling for a special session in June to finalize the budget. While supporters of the early learning bill hope the legislature will approve it this summer, lawmakers are limited to dealing with only one item during special session. “The message I would like to see, and I don’t think I’m alone across the state, is for our legislature to seriously consider when they come back into session that some bills outside of the budget need to be addressed and this is one of them for the benefit of our children, especially since it got tabled last year, and now we talking about tabling it for the second year in a row,” Watson said.

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Safety measures delayed for early learning centers

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