I am writing on behalf of the parents, staff, and the children—current and past—who have attended Overlee Preschool in regards to the proposed regulation to amend Standards for Licensed Child Day Centers (22VAC40-185).

While we support the state government's efforts to ensure the Commonwealth's adherence to federal health and safety requirements, we believe several provisions in 22VAC40-185 place undue burden on small, cooperative preschools such as ours . The implementation of the regulation as drafted will almost certainly see schools like ours—which has provided high quality and safe early childhood education to Virginia's children for more than 70 years—close.

Overlee Preschool is a non-profit, part-time, parent administered preschool. Our focus is early childhood education for 2 to 5 year-olds in a cooperative environment. This means that each classroom is led by an experienced and qualified teacher, with a trained parent volunteer serving as classroom aide. Parent volunteers serve on a rotating basis, with each family volunteering in the classroom approximately once or twice a month. Children generally attend school for 2 to 2.75 hours a day, depending on the child’s age and class/group, with an optional 1.5 hour “lunch bunch” add-on for 3 to 5 year-olds. The parents are included in our supervision ratio and are within sight and sound of the children and teacher during their volunteering time. Our school averages 35 families on a year to year basis.

We support Virginia's child care and development regulations reflecting that of federal statutes; though we strongly believe the draft regulations should be revised to both protect the child and that child's access to quality, safe cooperative childhood education. We believe our cooperative preschool environment should have exemptions under the proposed standards due to the nature of how our school is operated.

Misty Sluyter

President, Board of Directors

Overlee Preschool

President@Overleepreschool.org