To whom it may concern: 

The decisions that parents make on the subject of the education of pre-school age children are never something that we take lightly. In this regard, my family has been fortunate to fall into the amazing world of cooperative preschool at Dulin. The experience both my boys (one graduate, now in 2nd grade, and one current student in his third year) have received there is second to none. While they have benefited from their exposure to the educational/curricular expertise of true professionals who teach there, the true benefit has been the community at large that is created through the cooperative model. Ensuring that parents are involved in day to day life through cooping in the classroom allows the development of relationships that benefit children and parents alike. Having children between the ages of 0-5 can be an isolating and exhausting experience for a parent. Allowing them access to other children as well as parents of similar aged children provides a community, a village if you will, of people who can help provide for and support children and families alike. 

We certainly understand the need for adults in a classroom full of children to have proper training. However, the proposed new training requirements for parents who volunteer at cooperative preschools are so burdensome that they will doom the traditional cooperative preschool model. It is not feasible to ask parents of young children to undergo 16 hours of orientation training and 20 hours of annual training.

We ask that the total number of training hours (both orientation and ongoing, collectively) for cooperative preschool parents be limited to the current 4 hours. Please remove the language "who are not considered staff" from section 22VAC40-185-245C describing the required annual training for cooperative preschool parents. Please include an exception for cooperative preschool parents in the new orientation training section 22VAC40-185-240.

Cooperative preschools have been a valued early education option in Virginia for decades. Our school, Dulin Cooperative, was established in 1967. The traditional cooperative preschool model has many benefits for children and families including low tuition (because the parents serve as unpaid classroom aides) and deep, meaningful parental involvement in children's early education (widely acknowledged as beneficial for children's development).

In order to comply with the new regulations, cooperative preschools would have to hire aides so that parents would not be counted in staff ratios. This would not only reduce the significance of parents' roles in the classroom, but would also raise tuition so significantly that many families could be left without any affordable preschool options. 

We respectfully urge you to implement the above changes to the proposed regulations in order to preserve the viability of traditional cooperative preschools. Please don't undermine what is currently a successful and highly beneficial system for both educating and providing a village for preschool aged children and their families.

Thank you.