Certainly the county can issue their own order for child care centers with their own specific rules, but they haven't done so. The existing order just points to the state. There are no county-specific rules right now on child care centers. |
It's like they are deliberately trying to confuse people, and shame child care centers into not expanding. Like another PP, I'm npot sure how much a difference it would make in terms of actual class sizes anyway. At our center I think only two of the rooms are at the reduced capacity right now, the others each have a couple spots available. But I'm not sure that's the case everywhere. |
I am a daycare. Can you explain this a little bit better to me? I thought we were under the Maryland state of education licensing and control. When Covid hit I was surprised that Montgomery county was following its own set of regulations and I have been following those. Are you telling me that I can just do what the state is telling me I can operate? I am operating at half capacity and my clients want to return but I didn’t think I was allowed to take them. |
What did they point you to? As I said before, the county's executive order simply tells daycares to follow state guidance. There are no references to capacity limits, nor am I aware of any other health order they would place capacity limits on child care centers. I don't think MoCo's DHHS is actually paying attention to what's in the orders. |
This is all the current MoCo executive order says related to child care:
"Childcare. Must follow any guidance issued by MDH and as amended from time to time." |
I just got this email: In response to the governors announcement announcing updated guidelines for child care programs MSDE sent a letter on October 9 to all regulated child care alerting our community all programs will return to COMAR regulation on November 30. Montgomery County however, has announced at this time child care programs would not be following the State's return to full capacity due to sustained levels of community transmission and a continued high percentage of new cases in the 0-19 year-old age group. Montgomery County will continue to review the recent updates to provide more thorough guidance to those facilities affected. PLEASE BE ADVISED...At this time, Montgomery County child care centers, family child care homes, letter of compliance programs and other entities licensed under MSDE Office of Child Care, including school age care, will remain at a maximum of 15 people in a classroom or home. |
I just don't understand how they can legally do this- is the county taking over regulation of childcare centers? |
They're just assuming no one is actually going to look into it to see that there's no actually a county order capping it at 15. |
Ok, but how is a daycare provider to know which to follow- an explicit email from the county saying the county is maintaining 15 people max vs. the kinda cryptic information in the executive order? |
Agreed. What the county is doing is incredibly inappropriate. I've talked with some of the higher-level supervisors in the DHHS office. It's pretty clear that don't actually care about going through the proper channels. They want to follow the state, because there's no local staff overseeing child care centers, but they're not happy with the decisions the state is making. So they're just making stuff up as they go along. |
Simply put, if the county is going to say there's a 15 person limit, they should be able to point to either a law passed by the council, an executive order signed by Elrich, or a health order signed by Dr. Gayles. They can't do that, though, because there is no such order or law. |
Has anyone gotten a detailed notice/explanation of the child care capacity limits in Montgomery County? |
Nothing except the emails that are posted above. |
Has anyone pushed back and asked for a reference to a legal order? I reached out, but I'm not getting a substantive response. |
I’ve written Elrich but not gotten a response. |