First of all, we are licensed through the Division of Child Development in Raleigh. They have a set of codes and guidelines that we must adhere to in order to operate. The list of rules is so long that they require trainings prior to giving out the handbook. In fact, we can remember going to the training class for the Division's handbook where they handed us a five inch binder so filled to the brim with codes and laws that even the very best legal mind would struggle to untangle it all. We looked at each other with panicked expressions and wondered aloud what in the world we had gotten ourselves into. It was a brief, but very scary moment, until the trainer stumbled when explaining one of the laws and we realized that even the Division itself struggles at times to decipher it. Besides that, we are not the kind of women who quit easily!
Next we have technical assistance from Orange County Child Care Services. They don't impose any regulations upon us but they do work very closely with us to incorporate best practice in our classrooms. We have found them to be extraordinary allies and coaches. They have been particularly helpful in the area of ITERS and ECERS.
What in the world are they???
ITERS is the Infants and Toddlers Environmental RatingsScale.
The ECERS is the Early Childhood Environmental Ratings Scale.
This is a rigorous process where a representative comes to the school and randomly chooses one of our classrooms for each scale. Then they spend the day observing and rating our teachers and classroom environment. It focuses on things like the materials in the classrooms and the manner that the teachers use when speaking to the children. It is a very important but stressful process as there are many factors and the outcome heavily impacts our star rating. It is important that we incorporate all of the components in the dreaded handbook in order to score well. Orange County CCS has been incredibly helpful in preparing us for the scales. They even gave us coaching leading up to the scales, conducted a mock scale so that we could improve prior to the real thing, and then sat with each of our teachers to offer one on one coaching. They are wonderful people but this is still an incredibly overwhelming process- especially when you take into consideration that we are teaching throughout the process.
By the way...We did really well and they were very proud of us after our scores were in.
Next on the list is a series of Orange County agencies. We answer to Orange County Fire, Orange County Environmental Health,Orange County Social Services, Orange County Building and finally, Orange County Zoning. These folks visit us whenever they want (sometimes annually, sometimes more often) and each also has a whole (and often different) set of regulations that we have to follow. To make it all the more challenging, most of their rules and regulations change every so often. We are responsible to know the law but they aren't necessarily responsible for updating us.
By now you probably understand that this is all very complex. We generally are able to keep up UNTIL the regulations conflict with one another.This happens more often than you would think and it is very difficult to navigate the web of laws sometimes. So for instance... Orange County CCS recommends that we cover our walls with the children's art work. For them the more the merrier, especially on ITERS and ECERS day. We get points for having lots of art everywhere. The fire marshall says that no more than 20% of our walls can be covered in art at any one time. We gain points with the rating scales and lose points with the fire marshall all at the same time.
Here is another example: Orange County CCS and the Division love when we section off an area in the classroom with curtains to create a cozy spot for the children to retreat to. We gain points for having such spaces in every room. The fire marshall won't allow us to hang anything (curtains, barriers, screens, etc.) in the classroom and has actually made us take some things down.
After nearly five years of constantly adjusting ourselves and our environment we have learned to justsmile and go with the flow. We respect each of our inspectors and know that they and their agency are just doing their best to keep the school safe.
It would certainly be wonderful if someone, anyone, were to create one manual that addressed all of these rules. That is a whole other blog entry in itself.
Now that you have the primer, this is our most recent issue: Our incredibly gifted architect has built us a beautiful building that is schoolcode-ready as well as daycare-ready...in most counties. See what I didn't mention above is that all of the rules are subject to county authority. So what we can do in Orange County may in fact be illegal in Durham County! Unbelievable really.
TheDivision LOVES our plans as they are, but Orange County Environmental Health requires us to have more sinks in the plan. We need more sinks, but building has some strong opinions about where they need to be. If we were to place them where building wants them it would make the Division very unhappy. This is a very tricky situation all the way around.
When we first opened the Davis Road Campus we used to laugh because we have so many sinks that we could have marketed the school as having one sink per child. We would jokingly tease our Environmental Health inspector, Ron that we were the only school in the state with a 1:1 ratio- of children to sinks that is. At the time we thought it was ridiculous. In hindsight, we are so grateful for everyone of them as there are truly never enough sinks when you are dealing with young children.
We digress to mention that because going into this project we knew how many sinks were going to be required and tried to incorporate all of them into the plans. When the plans arrived we took a copy to Orange County Environmental Health just to be safe- or so we thought. We quickly learned that we were still missing several sinks. Some of the sinks were sinks that we are aware of and thought that we had planned for. Some were not. For instance, we need to add sinks that are called (among others) "The Vegetable Washing Sink," and the "Meat Preparation Sink," and the "Entrance Sink." Those were new to us and some of them are new to Orange County this year.
In truth, the logic for each sink makes complete sense once itis stated aloud. However, as some of the sinks are not in the state guidelines and others are even new to the county guidelines they just slipped through the cracks.
In the end we had to revise our plans this week in order to add some twelve new sinks. We may again be able to advertise our 1:1 ratio, but that is just fine with us as long as the school (and our many, many sinks) can please everyone.
Now that you know all of that we know that you are wondering what that does to our time frame.The answer is that this doesn't change a thing as we have plenty of time for revisions while the site work is being completed. Which brings us to the next question: When will the site work begin? It is our understanding that the permit will be issued any moment and then we will start to dig. In the end, this time of waiting for the permit has been a true blessing. The reason is that once the crews show up on site we are responsible to pay them by the day- rain or shine. With all of the rain that we have had since the beginning of the year we would have paid our crew to stay at home many many days. We think that this has all worked out to our benefit in the end.
Glimpse:
Since our opening day we have DREAMED of a HUGE room that is indestructible, with a drain in the floor, where the children can create ANYTHING that they can imagine, out of ANYTHING that they can find, and that can be rinsed clean when they are finished. In this room there must be not just A sink, but THE sink. In our imaginations it has been a long trough sink with many motion-activated faucets so that lots of friends can wash their hands together.
Our new school will bring that dream to reality. We have an enormous room that we are calling the Messy Room/Children's Dining Room that will have a concrete floor, tiled walls, our trough sink, and a drain. It is enough to make usgiddy- seriously! We plan to use that room to explore many new kinds of art. We are particularly interested in having the children experiment with clay. Work with clay is a huge component of Reggio-Emilia philosophyand programming that we have not had the space to develop. We are thrilled that our newspace will afford us the luxury to not only create more but to also expand and improve our program.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thank you for your comments.