ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, October 10, 1996 TAG: 9610100107
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LESLIE TAYLOR STAFF WRITER
As a member of Virginia's Child Day Care Council and executive director of the Greenvale Nursery School in Roanoke, Sandra Carroll is in the unusual position of developing regulations for day care centers in the state and heading a day care center that must adhere to them.
Today, the council's 20 members will consider endorsing proposed changes in state regulations for day care centers. Some early education experts and child care professionals fear those changes will lower the quality of Virginia's child care.
Carroll is among them.
"I cannot speak as a council member," she said Wednesday. "But as director of a child care center, we are concerned with some of the changes and would not choose to lower our standards to those levels. We would continue to maintain levels of quality."
Carroll stressed that the new regulations would amount to minimum standards. The proposals would drop the requirements that teachers have a high school diploma and that a center's director have at least 48 semester hours of college education.
Carroll said she hopes centers would try to exceed some of the standards.
Some proposed changes "do seem to be of concern throughout our child care professionals here in the valley," Carroll said. Many of those professionals, including Carroll, are members of the Southwest Virginia Association for Early Childhood Education, an affiliate of the Virginia Association for Early Childhood Education.
Both associations are concerned that the proposed changes will hinder the quality of child care, particularly the proposal to lower educational requirements, Carroll said.
"If you don't have some education in child development, you can't understand what experiences should be for young children," said Ann Francis, director of Resource and Referral at Virginia Tech, which provides family support services in the New River area. "You don't have the knowledge of what children need at each age. Then the situation in the classroom is likely to be a less-than-optimal situation for children."
One advocate for children, who asked not to be identified, said "to abandon the minimum kind of requirements that Virginia had is such a step back in the protection of children and appreciation of early childhood, that it's appalling."
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