Just as quality day care programs can be a powerful force in shaping our children's lives, inferior ones can threaten their development and safety. Unfortunately, there is too much evidence to suggest that New York state isn't up to the task of straightening out the bad facilities, despite Gov. Andrew Cuomo's emphasis on the importance of early-childhood learning.
Experts report that kids from high-quality day care will show better academic achievement and less misbehavior than those who endured programs that were mediocre or worse. This means day care will play a strong role in shaping America's success — or decline — as many millions of day care graduates grow into adulthood.
The news isn't all bad in New York. The state's oversight of day care has improved from the sometimes negligent bungling of the 1990s. Back then, as a reporter for the Long Island newspaper Newsday, I worked on investigations that found that weak state enforcement repeatedly allowed kids to remain for years in badly run, sometimes dangerous programs, while parents got little information.
Now, state inspections are more frequent. Inspectors have smaller caseloads. The state oversight agency, the Office of Children and Family Services, now posts information on its website that's meant to help parents evaluate programs.
Some of the bad news: It's still much too easy to find situations that raise troubling questions about the children's well being. Long Island data, for example, shows that day care programs hosting several thousand children are operating with documented — but still uncorrected — violations of OCFS safety and health rules.
The OCFS website also reveals Albany programs with violation histories that suggest a scary disregard for the children's basic safety and peace of mind, never mind their intellectual and emotional development.
One Albany center, licensed for 68 children, was cited for "methods of discipline, interaction or toilet training which frighten or humiliate a child." Another center, licensed for 116 kids, violated the important rule that "children cannot be left without competent direct supervision at any time." Another center, licensed for 76, broke the supervision rule, operated with too small a staff, and failed to obtain fingerprints from adults with access to the children so that required background checks could be done.
"We still have a system that doesn't always recognize that these early years are a critical part of a child's life —very important to a child's development," said Janet Walerstein, who runs a nonprofit public service agency that helps Long Island parents find quality day care.
While it's good news that inspectors uncovered these dangers, some critics note that such blatant violations rarely lead to license suspensions or even small fines. Generally, the state prefers to avoid punitive measures even when children are put in danger. Instead, OCFS consults with violators about how to how to improve their programs, then conducts follow-up inspections.
OCFS could also do more to inform parents about how to avoid the bad day care operations. A report last year by some Democratic state senators criticized the OCFS website for failing to specify if a program's violations include any in the worst categories — "serious" and "imminent danger." That "failure," they said, makes it harder for parents to find a program with a solid safety record.
Another troubling issue is the state's failure to oversee many of the numerous child care programs that call themselves nursery schools, which are not necessarily licensed facilities. The state allows many to operate without a license or inspections, even for basic fire safety, as long as they're open for only three hours a day — or at least claim to be.
Some nursery schools operate under the State Education Department's oversight, but that program is completely voluntary. So, across the state, communities are full of nursery schools that the state has never checked to see if any employees are convicted criminals or sexual predators, much less what their level of child care training might be.
Dr. Kathleen Roche, a reform advocate, said "too many of these children" in unregulated nursery schools "are looked after in outright firetraps by unqualified people. State officials have deliberately looked the other way for decades."
Some more good news — sort of. A respected day care professional organization, Child Care Aware of America, publishes detailed analytical reports on the quality of oversight in every state. Each state gets a letter grade, A through F. The group's 2013 report named New York as having the best regulatory system in the country, despite its problems. True, much of the competition is weak — many states have woefully flawed programs and rarely make improvements.
The same report, however, documented another serious gap in New York's protection of day care children: The background and criminal-record checks it conducts for adults with access to day care kids don't include an important safety measure — a national-level FBI fingerprint check. Their prints are checked only against state records. Child Care Aware says any "comprehensive background check" should include the FBI's far more extensive fingerprint registry, which would flag people with out-of-state criminal records.
Oh, and about New York state's top-in-the-country letter grade: It was a "C." The state met only 77 percent of the group's recommended standards — a finding that leaves thousands of working parents with too much to worry about. The report says many providers should have more child care training and the state should have more licensing inspectors.
We haven't heard enough about these oversight weaknesses from our legislative leaders or the governor. The OCFS has many smart, concerned staffers, but they need stronger resources and legislation to do a better job.
Maybe the victims just don't have enough political clout. Apparently our little kids need to form political action committees, make trips to Albany, hire thick-wallet lobbyists and hand out hefty political contributions.
But since that can't that happen, I guess the kids need to be warned that in our system, despite some improvements over the past decade, just being adorable doesn't mean they'll always be adequately protected.
Brian Donovan is a retired Newsday reporter whose national awards include the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting and the University of Maryland's Casey Medal for stories on day care problems.