Rep. Craig Snow, R-Warsaw. Jonathan Hawkins Photography
INDIANAPOLIS — Legislators in the Family, Children and Human Affairs committee unanimously passed a bill Thursday allowing public schools to bypass licensure requirements to provide child care but several expressed reservations and asked for continued work.
“I will give my yes on one condition that (bill author Rep. Craig Snow) works on this,” Rep. Vanessa Summers, D-Indianapolis, said. “Sometimes I think that people come and do a whole big piece of legislation for a problem that could be taken care of with a little communication.”
Snow said that certain requirements from the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration, which oversees child care, made it difficult for school corporations to open child care centers for their staff or for the community.
“We’re trying to make it easier for schools to allow for more child care in communities,” Snow, R-Warsaw, said.
Four people testified in favor of the bill, all from Kosciusko County, which they called a child care desert, meaning the community didn’t have enough child care to support the needs of working parents.
Ryan Zimmerman, the director of human resources with Poly Wood, based in Syracuse, said his company wanted to grow and hire more employees but was limited by the availability of child care.
“I’ve encountered situations from existing employees who’ve had to quit their jobs after having kids because they couldn’t find affordable child care in the area (and)… Other situations where employees that we tried to hire from other counties, other towns and other state — they’ve had to turn down their employment because they couldn’t find reliable child care,” Zimmerman said.
A local school corporation attempted to address the shortage but ran into problems when it requested multiple licensure exemptions.
FSSA doesn’t allow for a school to offer multiple programs, such as infant/toddler care, “latch key” afterschool programs or preschool — which the district attempted to do.
To bypass FSSA regulations, the program closes once every 10 business days — every other Friday — which means it isn’t considered a licensed child care provider.
Sherry Searles, the director of Kosciusko’s Child Care and Early Learning Coalition, said the school corporation would continue to conform to FSSA licensure requirements even though they were exempt.
“We were thrilled when our local school district stepped up in the last 12 months to say they would offer their buildings as safe places for their child care,” Searles said. “The programs that we are working with both take (child care) vouchers and are working on past equality which means they have a lot of oversight and regulations and state visitors coming to see them.”
But Searles said other programs could potentially choose to opt out of those requirements, a concern for legislators.
Rep. Elizabeth Rowray, R-Yorktown, said that without staff ratio requirements, centers providing infant care could be understaffed, a dangerous possibility that risks the lives of children. State law requires one caregiver for every four infants and increases the number with older children.
“I understand the need for the care, for people to be able to go to work… But latchkey is very, very different than infant care and without that licensure, how are you going to guarantee to parents that that ratio is being upheld?” Rowray said. “I want there to be the ability for there to be child care but… without this licensure, I’m kind of struggling with that.”
All 10 members present voted for the bill. Snow said he would work on the language of the bill to address the concerns of the committee.
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