To the State Board of Social Services, 

As a Board Member and parent at Fort Hunt Preschool, a parent cooperative preschool, I am greatly concerned that the Proposed Amended Standards will no longer allow parents to actively and meaningfully participate in their children’s preschool education and ultimately will endanger the cooperative preschool model.

The current Standards, recognizing the unique and critical role of parent volunteers in a parent cooperative preschool setting, require cooperative parent volunteers (commonly called “parent helpers”) to attend 4 hours of training annually, 22VAC40-185-240.  This “parent helper” exception appropriately acknowledges the role of parents in a cooperative preschool, as well as the intrinsic value of an early childhood education model premised on parent involvement.

By contrast, the Proposed Amended Standards, specifically 22VAC40-185-240 and 22VAC40-185-245, would require cooperative preschool parent volunteers to either:

      (1) Complete the 36 training hours (16 orientation, 20 ongoing) required of professional staff, or
      (2) Remain in constant sight and sound supervision of a staff member.

These proposed changes do not take into account the special role a parent helper plays in a cooperative preschool.  At a parent cooperative preschool, “ . . . parents and children learn together through shared life in both home and school” [Dr. Katherine Whiteside Taylor, founder of Parent Cooperative Preschools International].

I am part of a cooperative preschool because I want to actively share in my child’s life at school.   I undergo the same background checks as professional staff so that I may be integrally involved in these important first steps from home.   When assisting in the classroom, I am under the supervision and guidance of the trained professional staff even though I may not be in the staff’s sight and sound supervision every second of the day.

Even though I have the same background checks as staff, I am a parent helper, not a professional staff person.  We are not one and the same.  Requiring me to complete 36 hours of training in order to assist in my child’s class 1-2 days a month would be so disproportionate and burdensome to me and my family that, sadly, we, like most families, would have to forgo joining a parent cooperative.  Moreover, if the role of the cooperative parent volunteer is circumscribed as the proposed amendments require, cooperative preschools will have to hire additional staff, which in turn will require that tuition be raised prohibitively.   Many, if not most, cooperative preschools will become financially untenable, caught in this Catch 22.

To preserve the parent cooperative preschool in Virginia, the Board is respectfully requested to please revise the Proposed Amended Standards to allow cooperative preschool parents to work in the classroom under the guidance and supervision of professional staff but without continuous sight and sound supervision of a staff member provided that the parent volunteer:

         (1)  passes all of the background checks required of professional staff; and
         (2)  completes a total of 4 hours of orientation and ongoing training annually.

These changes will allow parent cooperative preschools, models of parent and family engagement in education, to continue their important work to the benefit of children and families in Virginia, while appropriately safeguarding the children in care.

Respectfully submitted,

Katie Copps