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Daycare Center and Family Home Forum>Building Code / Amount Of Children
Unregistered 05:52 PM 04-11-2015
Good evening,

I am a long time reader here but this is the very first time for me to post.
My business partner and I are planning to open a bilingual part time Kindergarten, in order to serve the many German/American families around here and their children. Our program will contain two groups. The morning group will be from 8 am to 12pm, the afternoon group will be from 2pm to 5 pm. This is, per NC state definition, not a form of child care and therefore unregulated. However, we still fall under the child care definition when it comes to the building code.

In the process of getting everything inspected and licensed, I am bumping into problems with the gentlemen of the building code department. We will be 2 teachers and 8 children in each group, meaning there will be 8 children in the morning group, and 8 different children in the afternoon group. I figured we would fall into the R3 building code , since we will not have more than 8 children at a time. The building code department however wants us to comply with the R4 code, stating that the maximum amount of children is based on a 24 hour period. This would mean that, in 24 hours, I would have 2 x 8 = 16 children. R4 allows up to 16 children. I spent the last couple of nights reading through the building codes and for the R3 code it states that "no more than 8 children can be cared for at any given time". I could not find anything that says that I can not care for more than 8 children within a 24 hour period.

I was just wondering if anyone has ever gone through this process, and can tell me if there is really a 24 hour restriction. I was already given wrong information by those gentlemen, so I wouldn't be surprised if this is just another wrong piece of information.
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Unregistered 09:41 AM 04-12-2015
I can't speak to your situation specifically but, when I had to deal with the planning department in my county it was confusing. I ended up taking a copy of the regulations down to their office and speaking to a friendly receptionist. I told her I really wanted to be prepared for the inspection and asked if she could she give me the name of someone really knowledgeable about the regulations. She gave me the supervisors number. I called him and he cleared everything up. When in doubt, go to the most knowledgable person. But in general, numbers of kids would refer to "at one time" not in a 24 hour period.
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