* WAND’s Mike Miletich…

The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services allowed assistants at day care centers to watch children under two for up to three hours per day throughout the COVID-19 pandemic to help address the worker shortage. Now, DCFS is facing scrutiny for trying to reduce the time assistants spend monitoring rooms.

Assistants were allowed to watch children under two for longer periods of time due to an emergency rule filed in 2020. However, DCFS never worked with state lawmakers to make it a permanent rule. The agency wants to cut that time frame down to 90 minutes per day.

“That most vulnerable age group must remain under the supervision of qualified staff at all times,” said Shontée Blankenship, the DCFS Deputy Director of Licensing. “That is nothing new. It’s part of our permanent rule. We have been enforcing it before COVID and we’re still enforcing it today.”

Many day care providers told lawmakers that cutting this option for assistants would create unreasonable and unnecessary costs for their business. The powerful Joint Committee on Administrative Rules suspended the DCFS rule on July 18, stating that the potential change would pose a threat to the public interest and welfare.

“I don’t think you folks belong in this business,” said Rep. Steve Reick (R-Woodstock). “This is not part of your portfolio. Your portfolio is to protect the safety of children, not to license day care centers.”

Um.

* The Flynn Report explains what actually happened…

JCAR objected to and suspended portions of the Department of Children and Family Services’ emergency rule titled Licensing Standards for Day Care Centers because they fail to meet the criteria for emergency rulemaking in 1 Ill. Adm. Code 230.400(a)(1)(C) and (a)(3)(B) and meet the criteria for suspension in 1 Ill. Adm. Code 230.550(a)(3)(A). Suspended portions of the emergency rule include: (1) Section 407.90(e)(3)(A) and (e)(3)(B)(i), (ii), and (iii); (2) provisions in Section 407.90(e)(3) and 407.190(f) that limit early childhood assistants’ supervision of day care center classrooms in the absence of early childhood teachers to classrooms of children age 2 and older, for only the first and last 90 minutes of the center’s licensed program hours; and (3) provisions in Section 407.90(e)(3)(B) that allow no more than 50 percent of licensed classrooms in operation to be supervised by early childhood assistants.

This emergency rule implements previous Department policy, with additional unjustified restrictions, that allowed day care center classrooms to be supervised for up to 3 hours a day by early childhood assistants when an early childhood teacher is not available and this substitution is included in the center’s staffing plan. The Department initially implemented this 3-hour policy in 2020 via emergency rules that were allowed to expire and never adopted companion proposed amendments that would have made this policy permanent. The Department then revived this policy as guidance that was in effect from September 23, 2022, through May 31, 2023. This emergency is agency created because the Department previously implemented the 3-hour policy outside of rule and passed up previous opportunities to adopt this rule despite multiple requests from day care providers. Additionally, this emergency rule imposes new restrictions, without adequate justification, on the use of early childhood assistants that the previous emergency rules and Department guidance did not include. By limiting the times of day when assistants can substitute for teachers and the number and age range of classrooms that can be supervised by assistants, this rule imposes unreasonable and unnecessary economic costs on day care providers, many of whom have relied on this policy for the last 3 years and may be forced to curtail their hours or reduce their number of classrooms as a direct result of this emergency rule. JCAR finds that these specified provisions of this emergency rule pose a threat to the public interest and welfare.

1) The Pritzker administration really needs to up its game with JCAR, and has needed to do so for a very long time. 2) JCAR declaring that a rule limiting assistants’ roles in supervising very young children without a trained teacher around is a “threat to the public interest and welfare” is a bit much.

…Adding… I’m told by a JCAR member that the administration has since circulated a draft that does include the commitment they made in June, which would allow for the same sort of flexibility that existed during the pandemic. The administration and the day care industry are now in talks. “If that goes well, we can lift the suspension in August and allow them to amend the rule with the flexibility language embedded in it,” the member said.