Okay – I normally don’t do this sort of thing. I usually just like to write for my own entertainment and don’t try to give advice, etc., but I thought this was worth passing along.
As we continue to search for the right child care situation for Camille, I’ve found a state website particularly helpful and wanted to share a link in case it helped anyone else. It’s the website for Bright From the Start, which is Georgia’s Department of Early Care and Learning.
These folks inspect every licensed child care facility in the state, and they’re the ones who follow up on complaints too. A facility’s latest inspection report is usually online, and I’m glad for the ability to read up on a prospective daycare or preschool (here’s a link to the provider search page). Of course, it can’t tell you everything you’ll ever need to know, but it has told me enough about some of them to know I shouldn’t waste my time there.
For example, there was the one daycare with inappropriate child-to-teacher ratios (a class of 39 three-year-olds with just 2 teachers). Another daycare was cited for having barbed wire hanging from the playground fence – what the heck? Yet another had a complaint filed after a one-year-old wandered, unsupervised, into an empty room and hung out there for a while, and was only discovered after his mother arrived to pick him up. Some reports even had statements like, “Teachers should watch their tone of voice when redirecting the children.” All I need to know, thanks.
We still haven’t decided what we’re going to do about Camille’s daycare situation, but I like knowing this resource is here as we look around.