Day care centers are already signing up to be part of a voluntary rating system for child care that debuts for the public next year.
Eighty-three day care providers applied last week to participate in the rating system. Participating child care centers will exceed the basic requirements for state licensing and will receive one of three ratings, which will be displayed to the public at the centers and eventually on the Internet.
Georgia is behind most of the nation in developing a child care rating system and last month lost out on a $70 million federal grant, a large chunk of which would have gone to offer free training and other financial incentives to rated home care, day care, Head Start and pre-kindergarten centers.
Lisa Padgett, a district manager of the Child Care Network, was involved in an early pilot of the program and said she liked the focus it put on quality.
“We know putting that at the forefront will raise the bar well above baby-sitting to teaching -- which is what we are doing,” Padgett said.
The Child Care Network has 80 centers in Georgia, including 12 in metro Atlanta.
Under the system, higher ratings are more likely to go to centers that have a lower ratio of teachers to children. For example, the top-rated infant classroom will have one teacher for four babies, and the lowest will have a 1-to-6 ratio, said Laura Johns, director of quality initiatives at the Georgia Department of Early Care and Learning.
The 83 early signers serve 8,000 children -- including 1,800 who are in families receiving some sort of child care subsidy, 78 living in foster care, 284 English-language learners and 189 with disabilities, Jones said.
That's significant, Jones said, because the priority is to support "our highest needs children," giving them a good foundation so they can meet the critical goal of reading on grade level by third grade.
Some centers will be eligible for new cribs, multicultural books and free training, and after they receive their rating, they may qualify for further bonuses, including teacher bonuses, she said.
About 230 providers also registered last week to attend orientation, which means the department could be nearly halfway to its goal of having 700 participants by the end of the year, Jones said.
Bobby Cagle, the commissioner of the Department of Early Care and Learning, said he and his staff have had multiple meetings with child care providers in recent months to discuss the quality rating system.
"When I came on board [last year], the governor's first charge was a quality rating system," Cagle said.
Padgett said state officials will have to come up with the money to create a tiered reimbursement system similar to the kind in North Carolina and other states.
"I think the bones are there" for a good program, she said.
Cagle has said that all successful quality rating systems offer monetary incentives to offset what providers spend to improve quality.
Last month, after the state lost out on the federal money, Cagle said he was committed to finding private foundations to support the program.
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