Washington State New Wacs

[Sandrager]

Hi All ,
Ranting a little bit. My wife and I have been working 6 months or so to open a home preschool. She has 20 yrs of experience and even still loves the job. Has many certifications and planning to certified in bilingual spanish teaching. She has a amazing heart and lots of patience. For a teacher you just need to really love the job I know I couldn't do it. A little frustrated with the new rules making home daycare's/ preschool's the same as the center's.

They are really driving up the costs by putting requirements on teachers and their college. We have a secondary cleaning business which cleans several center's and they can never find teachers. Imagine college kids that are teaching part time to pay for college now have to have teaching credits. Now there will just be less teachers available which drives up cost, secondly now you have to pay teacher's more since they have to have college credits. I know this in the end is for the kids but wow reasoning has really sent out the door.
My wife and I were jumping the hurdles going through the check list but now have found out you also have to meet ADA requirements. I am in no means being discriminatory but to expect wheel chair access for example is just unreasonable. This basically forces my wife and I to go unlicensed with kids no more than 4 hours per day. Our licencor warned us she had to deny 5 new home daycares this a week.

What sucks is know my wife is really good at this and enjoys it. Know we can offer a good preschool and bilingual. I am in Avionics and have to meet requirements all the time so that is not the problem.

just a little heart broken....

Thanks

[Cat Herder]

We understand.

When they cut my ratios in half, required me to go back to college and forced QRIS on me it was all I do to stay open after 25 years of successful service. My rates doubled and now I get the blame for daycare being so expensive. It is awesome.

[e.j.]

There have been several recent news reports in my state all complaining about the high cost of child care. One report indicated that the number of child care providers just in the state's capital has dropped by half since 2010 and they question why it's happening. Guess when new, tougher regulations were introduced? They're apparently going to try throwing money at it in the form of start-up grants to get more people interested in providing family child care. I laughed because you know with the state providing grant money, there will be hoops to jump through in order to get that money and there will be costs associated with those hoops. Also, once QRIS becomes mandatory here, I'm guessing many more providers will turn in their licenses. The harder/more expensive you make it for child care providers to provide care, the fewer providers available and the more expensive it will become for families who need child care.

[Sandrager]

appreciate the responses. Spoke to a assistance line today and they suggested to call Licencor to see if they offer waivers. She said all the homes I have been to they did not need ramps. She also said I was right in that it is required and they could pull the license in 6 months. Unless I have something in writing will stay legally unlicensed and follow rest of the wac. We are already setup for it anyway.