Questions for Prospective Preschool/daycare Programs

When I was looking for a daycare for my infant and even later when she was a toddler, another question I always asked was...Do you have an references? The daycare I asked when my daughter was an infant (actually she was not born yet but you know there are always waiting lists) said "Oh my, I hand't thought of that, no one has ever asked that before". She then gave me a list of parents (some past and some present) and an ex-coworker as well. The daycare I asked when my daughter was a toddler couldn't give me a list due to confidentiality. I offered to have them give my number to a few and ask them to call me. I did not get a call but I did recognize someone in the parking lot so I stopped and spoke with them. Their thoughts coincided with mine so we gave them a shot. Both times it worked out well for me.

These are great questions, but I can't help but wonder (I'm channeling Carrie Bradshaw here)...
Isn't all or at least MOST of this information available on their website and/or in their brochures/handouts?
My kids went to preschool between 1995 and 2003 and I was able to get most of this information based on what the director provided me with (school brochure and website.) Have things changed that much or did I just luck out with great options? Just curious!
I know the contract I signed went over pretty much all of this stuff in great detail.

Talk about high maintenance parenting.

One thing you might do though, is to call your local child care licensing office and ask for the hand book for being licensed. A lot of this stuff is covered by state regulations. If it is a state regulation it is out of the caregivers hands. If they want to keep their license they must do what is required in the handbook.

1. Most facilities that have a high rating will use something like a scholastic curriculum. It is bought and used in all the classrooms. They most likely will not tell you a lot about it. It's an acceptable curriculum and the director is not in the classroom so she is not going to know just what the teachers are working on out of it. That is not her job. Her job is a lot different than the teachers. She manages the business end of it and the teachers manage their classrooms.

2. Not your business

3. Posted in the entryway in the parent center area, also a more specific one will be posted in the classroom.

4. Depends on the activity.

Nap time is required by the state. The center or home has no choice in that. The child must lay down for a while and try to go to sleep if they are under school age, sometimes that is defined as 1st grade if kindergarten is just a half day. If they do not go to sleep after a while they may then be offered something quiet to do. They may not choose to get up and run around.

If they want to play toys while everyone else is working on something they will likely not be able to choose that option. If they want to sit quietly and read a book or play with something quiet while class in going on then that may be an option.

If they don't want to go outside because they don't feel well they will be sent home. All kids must go outside each day. Even with a doctors note, they will not be allowed to stay inside. If they are too sick to go outside they are too sick to be in the facility.

Each activity is going to have a different answer to this question. It cannot be answered.

5. State reg's will tell you what the rule is. The policy will be posted in the parent area at the front of the building and in the classrooms. Also see the last part of #5. They will be going outside on most days.

In Oklahoma, every child is required to go outside every day, for babies it states "unless there is risk of physical injury". Our licensing worker told me that meant lightening or strong winds, otherwise temperature or weather did not make a difference. So we went out in the rain, the cold, the heat, the nice weather too.

6. Naps are required by the state for every child under school age. Check the reg's. Each and every teacher will have a different idea about this. Some places will not let kids bring personal items in the room with them. Some teachers will discourage kids from using their items if they really don't want to have to keep up with 15 kids loveys from home. If they take it to child care consider it to be the child care facility's property. It will not come home again. They do not have time to babysit special toys from a child's home. They may have cots with sheets that are fitted to them that they wash once a week. They may have mats that you provide. That will be in the parent handbook.

7. Child care centers should provide one morning thing, either a full breakfast or a morning snack. Lunch and then an after noon snack. They need to be offered food of some sort every 3-4 hours. Water more often than that.

A weekly menu is required to be posted in the parent area or in the classroom. They can change this at any given time and substitute something if they need to. They don't have to notify anyone. They just mark a line through the item replaced and write what they replaced it with.

8. The holiday closings will be in the parent handbook or on the contract. They will be closed if the weather is so bad that the state is telling everyone to stay off the roads. That will be addressed in the handbook too. You will be expected to pay for a full week on the weeks that they are closed for holidays or bad weather too.

9. Same as above.

10. That is a question for the teacher of the class. They will be the one to tell you what they do on a daily basis. Most of the child care centers I have worked at have not even had a bathroom until the kids are 3 though.

11. This will also be in the parent handbook or the contract. It will be spelled out what they can fire your family for, without notice. They will have it laid out what will happen if your child is aggressive to others.

12. Teachers do the best they can. With a full class they are not omnipotent and cannot see every little thing that happens. They do fill out an incident report when they need to if they even know there is an injury. Many times a child will just start crying and then stop before the teacher can find out what happened. They just start playing and move on. So when the parent gets them ready for a bath and finds a bite mark the teachers may truly know nothing about it.

13. Kids move to the next classroom on their birthday usually. If they do not the throw off the teacher/child ratio in that classroom, it becomes a mixed age group and they can actually get in trouble from their licensing worker if they come in for an inspection and a child is not moved up, even if it is their birthday that day.

Had it happen, the worker had the teacher pick up the cot with the sleeping child on it and move them to the next classroom up. They made them move the child even though they had not be transitioned yet. It is a state regulation. Hopefully by their birthday they have visited the next classroom and know it is coming.

14. Mostly none of your business. The only thing you should have access to is the teachers credentials that should be posted in the classroom or the parent area.

15. You have to be kidding, none of your business in a big way, that would be breach of confidentiality for the teachers privacy.

16. If staff is absent the assistant director or the cook or the director fill in. Sometimes they will have a substitute available but they prefer to have a staff member they know and trust.

17. Again, none of your business. They have state regulations they have to go by, nothing else. If they have to have a person with X amount of training they hire the person who applies and has that training. If they meet that standard you have to be satisfied. The state regulates this and all the answers that you need to know would be in that state regulation hand book. They must go by the regulations or face being in non-compliance.

18. Yes, as the kids go home the classes are combined to save money paying staff and to cut down on bills lighting and heating/cooling mostly empty classrooms.

They don't want to pay 5 teachers when 1-2 teachers can have 6-20 kids depending on their ages. If there is an infant they can have 6, if they have all kids over 5 they can have up to 15 or 20 school-agers, depends on the state as far as the ratios go. It is so fluid that no one can guarantee what the mix will be on any particular day.

Some kids that come very early in the morning will also be combined until the teachers start arriving around 7:30 or 8am.

19. Staff hours of working are confidential as far as I am concerned. They may or may not work full time and that information is really not your business.

Truthfully, it is NONE of your business what their hiring procedure is or how long a teachers day is. There is also no reason for you to know the staff turnover rate, if you asked I would tell you thank you for coming in but I think we are full. Good bye.

The teachers your child may interact with are each and every teacher in the facility. They may give breaks for the teacher to go pee or to go to lunch. They have passed the states regulations and are certified to work there. That is enough for you to know about every person that works there.

20. If you don't come over the summer you would enter the facility as a new family in the fall as far as I would know. No one would pay the weekly fee for 12 weeks just to be sure they would have a spot in the fall.

Your 5 year old will be in Kindergarten in the Fall so he won't even be effected by this. He will come in from school, have a snack, have some play time and go home. He will most likely be there for just a couple of hours at most. You'll need to find a facility that will transport him for sure, or use the after school program.

21. That is a good question that will have an answer the director can give you. They will know if you need to pay for extra's for sure. It is their job to manage the bills and such.
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Here is a link to the regulations for a child care center:

http://arcweb.sos.state.or.us/pages/rules/oars_400/oar_41...

Here is a link to the regulations for child care homes:

http://daycare.com/oregon/family.html

Here is a link to find the non-compliance issues for a particular business, complaints are very different that non-compliance issues. Those are simple things they found to be wrong during inspections, such as maybe no toilet paper in the bathroom, not usually big issues.

http://www.oregon.gov/EMPLOY/CCD/complaints.shtml

This is the page that people who want to go into child care as a business would go to. The links here are very good ones and would be a lot of answers for you.

http://www.oregon.gov/EMPLOY/CCD/forProviders.shtml

I would add in one or both of the following. Or maybe even use these in lieu in some of the queries above as a lot of this is present in the brochure/website. However, knowing the answers to a lot of the above questions is certainly helpful, no matter where you got the info from :)

-Can I do a brief observation in a classroom and/or on the playground.
-Can you give me a couple current or past parents who are willing to share their experience with the school?

I think you could combine a lot of your questions about staff benefits, etc into a single "what is your staff turn-over rate/how long have your teachers been here"

I think that most of the other questions above are good, but are covered in the basic info packet.

I found the most important thing for us was to spend time quietly observing. All these questions are good, but really what you want to know is "will my child be treated with respect, will they be safe and well cared for, what will their day be like?" You can't get that from playing 21 questions with an administrator, but only by seeing what really goes on in a classroom. I reviewed and phone interviewed a lot of places and visited a total of 6 centers that made geographic sense.

One center sounded amazing from talking to the administrator. It was associated with the early childcare ed program of a local university, the head was a PHD with that program, they spent time in and around music & performing art spaces, they had a garden in conjunction with the horticultural program.... and when we walked in for our interview a teacher was LOWERING a child down by their WRISTS from an upper playspace and saying in a harsh tone "you get down from there now!"

After literally about 2 hours of combined observation by my husband and I we determined that, as good as they sounded, they did not treat the kids with respect, that the specific classroom our daughter would be in was small and cluttered feeling and that we would not be going there.

Our current daycare has a fabulous play ground, is sparkly clean and most important, I've rarely heard a teacher raise their voice. We walked in and immediately could imagine our, rather sensitive, daughter being comfortable and well cared for there. We did have some concerns about the 3-6 room being overly structured and disciplined, and that somewhat true, but it seems to work for my daughter (she started in the toddler room, which was perfect).

So far, every impression I had in my initial observation, both good and concerning has played out, and none of the things that have REALLY mattered to me were covered in the questions above.

You might want to ask about their security policies.
How do they prevent strangers and lunitics from getting into the class?
How do they keep wandering children from escaping the room?
What is their policy on people picking up kids? Is there a list, or can any family member come get the child?
How do they deal with divided families going thru the court system and custody issues?

Also for #8: If you are closed - will you be charged anyway.
If you miss days, can you trade for other days you may not be there?

Do you use rewards, praise, stickers, etc. I found my daycare was rewarding some kids with m&ms.

What is your illness policy? For the kids and employees. Our first daycare was 24 hours fever free (reasonable), our current kindergarten is 36 hours fever free (sorry, doesn't work as well - if he feels fine, we stop taking his temp). I did not want teachers coming in with colds - it's bad enough they get sick from the other kids.

If nutrition is important to you - are there birthday celebrations, holidays, etc where additional food items are supplied? Either by the daycare or parents.

Are you requested/required to do any sort of fund raising?

Are parents welcome to drop in any time? If not - I would eliminate the center immediately.

I am assuming you are only looking at licensed centers.

I think it is a good list. I do NOT think it is over the top. A good director should be happy to answer your questions and encourage you to spend some time observing. You don't want to pick a center and end up leaving because you are not happy. The daycare director does not want an empty spot to fill and an unhappy parent.

Many things in the handbooks are NOT what happens day to day. There is nothing in my son's preschool handbook about using rewards for behavior - food or otherwise.

There are MANY different curricula. From very rote, work book based programs where all the kids work with the teachers at the same time, to much more child led ones such as Montessori and Waldorf. Some programs encourage early reading. Some concentrate more on creative thought and story telling. Some are very nature based. Some include screens.

Naps are not mandated by my state. Our preschool had one nap a day for kids over 12 months. Our first preschool DID allow the children to play quietly with toys if they did not fall asleep. Some schools will have a teacher sit quietly with a child and rub their back, some do not. Our Montessori did not require naps for children who were no longer napping at home.

Outside time - apparently differs state to state. In my state, the kids do not go outside if the temp is something like 25 or below. They go out 4 times a day if there is not snow on the ground. The morning kindergarten kids and half day kids do NOT go outside if there is snow on the ground - period. The preschoolers and afternoon K kids go out once a day if there is snow on the ground. No way were these particular details in the handbook.

Our initial preschool advanced kids on their birthdays. Our Montessori advances kids in September. We have mixed age classrooms - there are a lot of benefits to that - to both the younger and older kids.

I am way happier that neither of our child care facilities provided meals. Actually the first year we were there - meals were an option - they were the standard chicken fingers and fries school lunch - not what I feed my son.

In response to the previous poster - we always ask #15, too. ^_^

I will be honest I do not think that #15 is really any of your concern in this situation. That is something between employer/employee.
#17 - Please explain why this is your concern - other than to know if they do background checks on their employees & they meet the certification requirments
#19 - When it comes to the length of their days. Why do you want to know?

To be quite honest your list is good except for these things. You are right you are over the top and seem like a parent that may get on the "wrong side" of teachers. I am saying this only because I have btdt.

Good Luck

I'm glad I do in-home care. Reading this list just reminds me of why I hate daycare centers and think that I wouldn't want a dog to go there, much less a tiny human.