Grand Prairie could allow licensed child care in homes. But barriers still remain
With decreasing child care homes and seats and a growing number of parents looking for care as they return to work, home-based providers in Grand Prairie are asking the city to allow them to become licensed homes, which would enable them to take in more children.
“I am in support of being licensed because I provide quality care for the children and I would like to have the opportunity to care for more children,” Leah Stanley, a child care provider, said before a City Council Committee on Monday. “Right now I am turning children away and referring them out.”
Stanley also noted that some child care homes have closed during the pandemic, citing lost profits and a lack of access to grants because a city ordinance wouldn’t allow them to become licensed.
In a presentation detailing the ordinance and possible changes, Cindy Mendez, the city’s director of public health & environmental quality, said that her department discovered a decrease in home providers from 33 homes to 26 — adding that there may have also been a decrease in demand as parents worked from home.
But City Council members serving on the Public Safety, Health and Environmental Committee shared support for changing the ordinance, which has put an extra layer of regulation on child care homes for the last four decades.
“Where I’m at right now … is I would really like to allow … licensed child care homes (and) at the same time, comply with our, our code and our fire code …to make sure we protect the children that are going to these homes for this child care,” said Junior Ezeonu, a member of the committee.
Roslyn Chaney, another provider who has been key in organizing the effort to amend the ordinance, said in her statement to the committee that she already adheres to strict safety regulations, including detailed evacuation procedures, yearly inspections and regularly changing out fire extinguishers.
But Mendez said that city fire codes could be cost prohibitive to home-based providers.
“What we found was that when you take care of more than five children in a home, you’re supposed to have a fire sprinkler system,” Mendez said. “And that cost can be pretty significant from what we could find.”
How and when fire sprinkler systems are required is a point of confusion for providers in the region, many of whom have been providing care to more than six children for over a decade.
Fire codes could prevent child care homes from becoming licensed
Jerletha McDonald, the director of Arlington DFW Child Care Professional Association, an advocacy and training organization, spoke at the meeting as well, pointing out that under current regulations, residential homes have all been providing care for more than five children, while also passing current inspections.
“If we are required to have sprinklers (for more than five children) that will wipe out the whole population of child care in the city of Grand Prairie,” she said.
Chaney also pointed out that she has passed all inspections, and has had 12 children at her home including the allowed six after-school children.
“When the firemen come out, they have a good time in my home,” she said. ”They’ve never told me anything about these codes that they’re mentioning today.”
Donald Spivey, the Grand Prairie fire marshal, said that inspections are completed at the request of a child care provider, usually on a yearly basis.
The inspection includes things like ensuring the presence of smoke and carbon monoxide detectors and emergency lighting, ensuring that a fire extinguisher is accessible and properly tagged and inspected and checking on whether an evacuation plan is posted at the front door.
Spivey said that child care centers require proof of annual inspection of sprinkler systems, and that child care facilities “may comply with the code in effect at the time they originally began operations,” adding that “any new in-home child care facilities would be required to comply with the current code, which requires a sprinkler system if more than five children are cared for.”
He did not respond to follow-up questions about providers that are currently caring for more than five children, don’t have sprinklers and yet have passed inspections, in time for print.
Jorja Clemson, another City Council member and the chair of the committee, said she wanted a solution that keeps kids safe without putting anyone out of business.
“The bottom line is we want kids to be safe, as safe as possible,” she said. “But in the meantime, we don’t want to put people out of business by requiring a $5,000 or $7,000 sprinkler system in one year or whatever the time limit would be.”
Ordinance blocking licensed child care homes is likely to change
Mendez said after the meeting that an ordinance change is likely, but what happens to homes without the necessary safety equipment is yet to be determined.
“I think in any case, there will be a change in our ordinance,” she told the Star-Telegram. “But how we’re going to deal with the currently operating child cares, that’s still yet to be determined to make sure we meet all the legal requirements.”
Mendez said she will return to the committee in the coming weeks to present more concrete options before the issue will be taken up by the full council for consideration.
The episode playing out in Grand Prairie reflects policy trends across the country, as child care providers also deal with ongoing staffing shortages and historic turnover.
Natalie Renew, the executive director of Home Grown, a national organization that supports home-based child care providers, said local policies across the country can have a chilling effect on home child care providers entering the market.
“There are lots and lots of ways that home-based providers can’t become licensed, and then lots of ways where they are discouraged, or there’s a perception of a barrier,” she said. “It happens in different places, I would say most especially in zoning, in the issuance of business licenses and health department requirements.”
In the cases where significant renovations like sprinkler systems are required, Renew said the cost is untenable for small businesses that are making, in many cases, $30,000 a year.
“That’s not really licensing,” she said. “You’re essentially having them augment their facility to look commercial. In some ways, to me, it’s sort of like a de facto elimination of a residential license … either because of the burden it creates, or because of the exorbitant costs.”
Oregon recently implemented a statewide requirement for sprinkler systems in any newly constructed or founded residential care facilities.
“Introducing a nonresidential use into a home greatly increases the fire and life safety risk,” an information page about the regulation said. “Installing a fire sprinkler system or taking other locally approved safety measures will help reduce this safety risk.”
In a case like Grand Prairie, such a regulation could make the ordinance change irrelevant to the providers pushing for it.
“Even if they say, ‘Oh it’s allowed now, but you need a sprinkler,’ it’s going to have the same effect, which is that it will prevent the participation of home-based providers in the system,” Renew said.
Other states, like Colorado, have enacted laws intended to remedy conflicts between state and local regulations.
House Bill 1222 for example, requires counties and municipalities to treat family child care homes as residences for the purposes of zoning, land use, fire and life safety and building code regulations
While current regulations already require annual fire inspections, Renew said that the focus across the country should be on helping home-based providers to be able to meet regulations.
“If we want every home-based provider to be fire safe, we can write that down in a regulation, but we could also invest in ensuring those places are fire safe,” she said.
“I don’t think anybody argues that having responsible regulation in place is important, and that we want our businesses to operate under a set of constraints, a set of regulations,” she said. “The question is have we done enough to ensure that these businesses are supported in being successful in meeting those regulations? And I think in almost all cases, the answer is no.”
Mendez told the Star-Telegram that the City of Grand Prairie has worked closely with providers, and hasn’t had any issue with them not meeting requirements so far.
“We have great providers here in Grand Prairie,” she said.
But advocates say supporting home-based providers is becoming increasingly important.
Home providers are preferred by people of color
McDonald pointed out in her remarks before the committee that home-based providers, which make up about 30% of the early education sector nationwide, are the primary source of care for diverse populations.
“We provide services for minorities, minorities usually gravitate to family child care providers, providers that are maybe the same race as them so that they can be more comfortable,” she said. “We keep all children, but that is a unique component of family child care.”
Renew said that trend is reflected across the country — and has become an increased focus of advocates and policy makers in the wake of the national reckoning over equity and race following the death of George Floyd, a Black man who was killed by a white police officer in the summer of 2020.
“As a result of the murder of George Floyd and having a more broad conversation around equity, we recognize that historically, home-based childcare has really been the first choice of new Americans, of Black and brown families, of families in rural communities and families of infants and toddlers,” she said. “So recognizing that those groups have been largely underserved in the Early Learning Sector, there is an increased emphasis on ensuring that they’re a part of the system, and that they’re thriving.”
“That, I think, is really wrapped up in a broader reckoning with equity,” she said.
This story was originally published February 9, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
