To Whom It May Concern:

My daughter attended the Dulin Cooperative Preschool in Fall Church, VA this past year and it has been an amazing experience for not only her, but our entire family as well.

I am writing to you today because I am deeply concerned about the increased parent training requirements proposed in your new regulations for Cooperative Preschools. While I believe that training benefits the entire preschool community, dramatically increasing parent training requirements to the extent included in your proposal will make it prohibitive for Cooperative Preschool families who want to participate in their child’s classroom to do so.

If parents cannot feasibly participate in the classroom because the training requirements are so burdensome from a time perspective, then your proposed changes pose a threat to the future viability of Cooperative Preschool Model as we know it.  

Making these changes would be a step in the wrong direction for the State of Virginia and for our local communities because ultimately it makes sense to encourage parents to be engaged in and take ownership of their children's learning and development to the greatest possible extent, as early as possible.  The more involved parents are in their child’s early education, the more aware they are of any social or learning areas that may need to be addressed early on, while they still can be addressed – something I am sure we can all agree can help our community and society in general.

I hope that my case for not changing the Cooperative Preschool Parent Training requirements was convincing. While there are so many other benefits to Cooperative Preschools that I did not mention here, I think the one I listed above is important. When it comes to education, an “all hands on deck” philosophy can lead to the development of better human beings.

Sincerely,

Rajini Hinduja

Save Our Cooperative Preschools!

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. 

We respectfully urge you to implement the above changes to the proposed regulations in order to preserve the viability of traditional cooperative preschools.