DATE: Saturday, March 15, 1997              TAG: 9703150287

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B5   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY ELIZABETH SIMPSON, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: RICHMOND                          LENGTH:   60 lines

SCHOOLING TO REMAIN LAW FOR DAY-CARE STAFFERS THE COUNCIL REWRITING CHILD-CARE STANDARDS REVERSES A CONTROVERSIAL EARLIER PROPOSAL.

Child-care center employees will still need a high school diploma or an equivalent to lead a day-care class or direct a center.

A council in charge of rewriting the day-care standards had proposed in October deleting that requirement, which is part of existing child-care standards. However, the Child Day Care Council decided this week to restore the high school diploma requirement to their proposal because of complaints from parents.

In October, the governor-appointed council proposed several controversial changes to Virginia's child-care regulations, including reducing educational requirements for lead teachers and center directors and increasing the number of 4-year-old children one teacher can care for in a classroom.

The proposed regulations ignited so much concern that Virginia legislators passed bills this year to put current educational standards and child-care ratios in the state code, so they could not be changed by the council.

Gov. George F. Allen has indicated he will veto those bills, saying day-care standards can be dealt with more effectively as regulations than as state laws.

But the Child Day Care Council has already made changes to the two most controversial proposals - the educational requirements of staff and the child-staff ratio of 4-year-olds - that the legislative bills sought to remedy.

The council dropped the proposal to change staff ratios of 4-year-olds in January, and Thursday followed that action with dropping the proposal to delete the high school education requirement for lead teachers and directors. The council rewrote the proposal to require directors and lead teachers to have a high school diploma, an equivalency diploma or proof of a home-school education.

Sharon Jones, chairman of the council, said the council members had received many letters and calls regarding the educational requirements and staff ratio. ``We wanted to respond to the concerns of parents,'' Jones said Friday. ``We're trying to create minimum standards that meet parents' expectations.''

Malcolm Cole, president-elect of the Virginia Association for Early Childhood Education, said he is pleased the high school education requirement has been restored for teachers and directors. However, he's still concerned that the revamped regulations still don't go far enough in requiring some type of college training or certification process for center directors.

``I think there needs to be some kind of early childhood education in the regulations for directors, there needs to be some kind of verification that the skills are there,'' Cole said.

The Child Day Care Council has been charged with streamlining the state's child-care regulations to make them less cumbersome and remove regulations that interfere in ``private enterprise and citizenry.''

The amended regulations still need to be reviewed by the state's secretary of Health and Human Services and the Department of Planning and Budget. Once those reviews are complete, the regulations will be published in the Virginia Register of Regulations, which begins a 60-day public comment period. Public hearings will be conducted throughout the state at that time.

The new regulations are not expected to go into effect until June 1998.

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