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Article published Mar 2, 2005
State puts day-care plans in timeout

COLUMBIA -- For the second time in a week, state officials have spiked plans to improve the quality of day care in the face of intense lobbying from private day-care operators.The latest shelved proposal would have capped the number of children allowed in one day-care room -- as low as 15 for the youngest groups to as high as 38 for older children.There now is no limit to how many children can be in a room -- as long as a sufficient number of caregivers are present."There are some situations here in the Midlands where you have 24 babies in one room," said Nancy Burchins, director of the United Way's "Success by 6" child development program."It's horrible."The class-size proposal was part of a larger plan to revisit day-care regulations for the first time in more than a decade.But opposition from some day-care operators, who lobbied lawmakers aggressively in recent weeks, threatened to stall all the proposed regulations.The S.C. Advisory Committee on Child Care Licensing opted to remove the "group size" limit in its proposal after consulting with Department of Social Services Director Kim Aydlette."I told them you could fall on the sword and let them pass or let them die," Aydlette said.A House subcommittee studying the new regulations likely will approve the rest of the plan in a couple of weeks. They would then need the approval of the full House and Senate.Committee chairman Rep. Jackie Hayes, D-Dillon, said the class-size limit would have sunk the entire package of regulation changes if it had remained."It would have been a big fight," said Hayes, who supports capping class sizes.Child advocates say they're dismayed because perhaps the most important proposed change was the one dealing with how many children can be in the same room.Some worry that, at a minimum, children lose out on precious sleep and physical contact when too many are kept in crowded rooms."This is about trying to improve health and safety," Burchins said.Last week, lobbying from day-care center operators also killed a proposed voluntary rating system, called Palmetto STARS. It would have assigned ratings to day-care centers willing to undergo an evaluation process, with a five-star rating being the best.One group fighting the class-size regulations is the S.C. Child Care Association, made up of private day-care operators. Attempts to reach representatives of the group were unsuccessful.A statement on the group's Web site said the revised regulations are acceptable, but "they still present challenges in the real world of operating quality, yet affordable, child-care programs."Still, some say the new regulations left intact will make the state's 1,200 day-care centers better.The remaining regulation changes would affect a variety of child-care issues, from how breast milk is stored to increasing the teacher-child ratio in day-care rooms."You have to take what you can get," Hayes said.