Annoyed/amazed by daycare response to Mem Day flooding

[Anonymous]

WOW! Way to flame the original poster. I'm not the OP but am also a parent of the center. People keep forgetting that priority number 1 is the children and their safety not work schedules and being inconvenienced! And since when did parents standards in DC become so low that people are ok with their half-ass response? The center is a business, not a charity and they need to operate like one. The center could have avoided a shutdown had the center resolved this in a timely fashion and kept parents in the loop. On second thought, the center probably would not have avoided a shutdown since they couldn't remain open doing the repairs anyway. This is 100% the centers fault. No one else.

[Anonymous]

As a parent at the center I can say without an ounce of hesitation that no child was ever in danger. The teachers would not allow that. This was all about a groups of parents who expected the director to tweet her every move. The inspectors revealed that the dime was dropped on Tuesday before the center even had an opportunity to respond. There are now 70 families with rag tag suboptimal care situations for their kids. These holier than thou parents did this out of spite and not the well being of any individual. It takes a day or 2 to get insurance adjusters out and the church was in the process of getting carpet replacement quotes. The center most likely would have been closed for 2-3 days during carpet replacement but it will now be closed for weeks while we wait for the carpet replacement scheduled for this week followed by the EPA inspection which will take a minimum of a week to receive a certified report followed by the time that it takes for OSSE and DOH to complete their evaluations. This was a very selfish move.

[Anonymous]

I am also a parent with a child at the Center and while I'm struggling to meet this unexpected childcare void, I believe it would not have happened if the Center was on top of everything and doing things on the up and up. Carpet replacement? I was never told that the carpets were going to be replaced, rather only cleaned and the children moved back into the space within a week. So clearly there was a lack of communication if PP knew that the carpets were scheduled to be replaced and that it's happening this week. The director should have know that keeping infants in the lower levels of the school was a code violation -- she's the director for goodness sake and it's her job to know these things! So she should have made educated decisions with the assumption that licensing could pop in for an unscheduled visit at any time. Yes, the parents perhaps jumped the gun if they in fact did call on Tuesday to file an investigation, but the Center does carry a huge burden of fault for not being proactive regarding the problem and only reactive. No, I never expected the director to tweet her every move, but the urgent pleas for a parent meeting were completely ignored. My hope is for the Center to open as quickly and safely as they can so our children don’t have to bear the brunt of prolonged unfamiliar and chaotic childcare situations. Our children are the ones most impacted by all of this and they just want to get back to the Center to see their friends and teachers.

[Anonymous]

Yes I am sure that the teachers are getting paid. One of them told me herself on the phone. I am glad they are, as this is not their fault and they have families to support. As I said earlier (14:18), I do understand both the parents who complained and the parents that are upset over the complaint, however I am no longer siding with those angry the school was shut down (even though I am scrambling for care). This whole situation has made clear a few things, but the most important is that the school needed to fix the problem properly from the start, and that meant shutting down a few classrooms when the leak happened (including my childs). Then when an inspector came they may not have shut down the whole school. Children are not allowed in the fellowship hall and the director should have known this. I expect the school to be aware of the rules and regs, so I have some comfort in knowing they are being taken care of. The whole situation is baffling.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes I am sure that the teachers are getting paid. One of them told me herself on the phone. I am glad they are, as this is not their fault and they have families to support. As I said earlier (14:18), I do understand both the parents who complained and the parents that are upset over the complaint, however I am no longer siding with those angry the school was shut down (even though I am scrambling for care). This whole situation has made clear a few things, but the most important is that the school needed to fix the problem properly from the start, and that meant shutting down a few classrooms when the leak happened (including my childs). Then when an inspector came they may not have shut down the whole school. Children are not allowed in the fellowship hall and the director should have known this. I expect the school to be aware of the rules and regs, so I have some comfort in knowing they are being taken care of. The whole situation is baffling.

Exactly! Parents shouldn't be responsible for telling the director of the Center what the updated rules and regulations are for setting up make-shift classrooms on a lower level. It's her job to know! I second your comment that the teachers are getting paid -- it's true for teachers, but I'm not so sure about floaters. If the school wasn't operating legally in terms of managing the flooding and relocation of the infant/toddler children, they should be temporarily closed until they can function in accordance to DC child care laws. The Center does have a community like feel, which I value, but the Director is ultimately responsible for knowing what is allowed by law and what isn't. Yes, no children were harmed while the rooms were temporarily moved to the lower levels, but we should all be lucky that a fire or emergency didn’t happy to test this assumption.

[Anonymous]

What other violations were present besides the carpet issue?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: These holier than thou parents did this out of spite and not the well being of any individual. This was a very selfish move.

You are so far off base with this comment. You must be the same self-righteous person who sent an email to the entire list serve saying that parents need to use their pull with DC agencies to reopen the center. What an idiotic comment to say that parents aren't motivated by spite. I was one of the 30 who emailed/called and I can tell you with 100% certainty that I only called because I was concerned for the health and safety of my child and was receiving absolutely no information from the daycare or seeing anything being done to fix the situation. I called Thursday and it sounds like I was far from being alone. Also, how do you know that one of the 30 calls didn't come from a teacher or two?

[Anonymous]

I am not that person. I claim spite because in the internal messages among parents there was very little mention of safety but a lot of mention of a certain person's inability to communicate. How do you know that the 30 calls placed were by individual families? Those calls are anonymous. I happened to run into one of the people who did complain and they regret doing so and having their friends and family doing so too. Therefore the This person had the nerve to tell me that she sis not realize that licensing would shut the center down. They were under the impression that they would give the center a list of repairs. If people were so concerned about the well being of their children they should have demonstrated this by not leaving their kids there. The sign in sheets on Wed-Fri were well populated even by those complaining the loudest. That does not demonstrate a real concern for the safety of one's child(ren). If I thought for a moment that my child was in peril, I would have taken a day or two off from work.

[Anonymous]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-parenting/post/when-parents-need-a-referee/2011/06/08/AGtDRgMH_blog.html#weighIn

[Anonymous]

^^^^ is the author a parent? Does this thread really deserve media attention?

[Anonymous]

I too am a parent at the center and the whole debacle is a mess. And no, I did not call to complain...

But, let's face it, for every parent who feels a situation should be handled one way, there is another parent who feels it should be handled another. There is no right answer and the finger pointing should stop. I agree with previous posters that the buck stops with the administration. While I did not feel my child was in immediate peril I was concerned about what may be growing as a result of the flood in future years and since we plan to be with the center for another few years, I did feel strongly about getting the problem resolved right away rather than waiting a few years for health problems to manifest. i wanted to be assured the problem had been properly assessed and remedied. Several of the parents even asked for a meeting so that they could be assured and feel comforted that any concerns were being addressed. i was one of those parents...and I feel that with the amount of tuition I pay, it IS within my right to get an affirmative answer that A) the problem is being addressed B) there will not be any future problems that will impact the health of the children because of the steps being taken.

Further, what if there was a fire?? The fact that children under 2 were on a basement level and the director didn't know that THAT was a safety issue further illustrates that the administration is just not being as thorough as they need to be in insuring the safety of the children. And, let me say we LOVE our teachers and know they LOVE my children, but the director still put the babies in harms way. This to me indicates that she is clueless on safety matters and that parents were within their right to feel concerned about their children.

Was it right to call OSSE? I can't say. What I can say is that I hope this issue exemplifies to the Center that resting on laurels isn't okay and that parents of the center are looking for SOME sort of connection to the administration so they feel they have somewhere to voice their concerns to so they are heard.

[Anonymous]

I was not one of the parents that called, but I sure thought about it. And now knowing that there were violations that jeopardized the health and safety of some of the children, I’m shameful that I didn’t.

My child was not in one of the rooms that was directly affected. But as parents, we have an unsaid responsibility to protect the interests of each other’s children. That is to say: If a parent notices something that could be hazardous to another child at a playground, that parent should do something to mitigate that danger right there and then – even if their own child would not be affected. THAT IS what a “community” is all about.

In this case, when the school administration appeared daft to parental concerns (and few could argue that they didn’t), some parents sought help from an entity that would listen. And good for them.

Let’s be clear - The Board of Health, OSSE, and the licensing boards are not punitive bodies. They exist to HELP people. They help keep the public safe, and they help the licensees understand and comply with minimum standards. If an entity should be closed, then they only have themselves to blame.

So is there still a community at FBC? Among the parents- Yes. All have come together to coordinate child care, no matter their views on the situation. Though the experience has been very time consuming, expensive, and overall unfortunate, many parents have worked together to help each other.

And as for the teachers… I wouldn’t feel too sorry for them. It seems as though they’re still being paid their usual wages, AND a few are charging a premium for babysitting services on the side (read: cash under-the-table). But they deserve a little bit of double-dipping. After all - they’re the best part of the place.

[Anonymous]

Are there any updates on the status of reopening?

[Anonymous]

We recieved a letter saing it will be closed this coming week- 6/12, no mention of when it will be reopening

[Anonymous]

I'm a parent at the center, and I was appalled that OSSE was called in before even 72 hours had elapsed. Parents were left to scramble for care over the weekend and continue to struggle. Teachers, who were paid through the end of the last payroll period, are NOT guaranteed further pay until the insurer verifies that it will cover those payments. The damage to the center was significant and will require carpet replacement as well as some minor drywall work. Work did not begin immediately but will move forward when a claims check comes in. The regulator is satisfied with the steps laid out for remediation and is monitoring, although the center is being encouraged to communicate more frequently with parents, as accusatory as some have been in those very early hours, again, before 72 hours had elapsed. There remains the possibility of opening a portion of the center for the unaffected rooms but that decision is at the discretion of the administrators who must determine whether it makes better sense to complete all of the work before allowing parents and children to enter the center. I don't disagree that communications were poor or that there wasn't a role for the regulatory agency at some point. I just disagree with the panic and hysteria resulting from rookie fears over "black mold" and "airborne toxins" within the first few days. A parent who feared her daughter suffered an asthma attack, possibly as the result of the situation at the daycare, brought her daughter in the very next day to the center. It's my guess that the reported asthma situation was what triggered such a rapid response by OSSE. To me, this demonstrated a classic DC response to tragedy --- resolution through e-mail, panic through listserv, and accusation without assistance. We needed to show up and help; we needed to judge for ourselves as parents whether we felt that our children were in peril, and we needed to be problem-solvers, not complainers. I have big issues with the center's administrators regarding their clumsiness in handling a crisis, but I have bigger issues with parents whose fears overtook their better judgment and who subjected other parents and the center's staff to unnecessary hardships. And no, I do not believe that all regulations help people --- human judgment and common sense still have a place in this world.