Action | Amend Standards for Licensed Child Day Centers to Address Federal Health and Safety Requirements |
Stage | Proposed |
Comment Period | Ended on 4/6/2018 |
Save Our Cooperative Preschools!
As a parent of two children in a cooperative preschool I would like to continue to be in their classrooms and be a part of their education as fully as I have been these last few years. As a former teacher I know how important parents are in the lives of their children and how wonderful the cooperative model is for this! 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 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. Thank you.
Sincerely, Kristin Wajert