The day care center where a toddler died this week has a history of safety problems that include unsafe playground conditions, dangerous chemicals within reach of children and heavy items stored on unsteady surfaces, according to state inspection reports obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The inspection reports from the Georgia Department of Early Care and Learning, which cover the period 2008 to 2011, also revealed problems documenting children's safety on field trips, ensuring that staff received criminal background checks, and making sure that staff fed infants in a safe manner.
While some of the problems were relatively minor and commonplace, others constituted serious breaches that put children at serious risk, in the eyes of some Georgia child advocates.
The DECAL inspection reports show that the center "was placing children at all kinds of risk," said Pam Tatum, head of the Atlanta advocacy group Quality Care for Children.
Neither center operator Marlo Fallings nor her attorney returned calls requesting comment Friday.
Jazmin Green, 2, died Monday outside Marlo's Magnificent Early Learning Center in Jonesboro. Police say she was left in a van after a field trip to a Chuck E. Cheese restaurant. Fallings, 41, her 23-year-old daughter, Quantabia Hopkins, and a juvenile assistant were arrested and charged with cruelty to children, reckless conduct and involuntary manslaughter. They are out on bond.
Police say Fallings and Hopkins falsified a checklist certifying that all the children had exited the van after the outing, filling it out before the van arrived back at the center. In addition, court documents show that the center waited more than an hour to call 911 after discovering the girl in the sweltering van.
Jazmin's father, Charles Green, said he was particularly outraged when he learned that a state inspection of the center in March had documented problems with accounting for all the children after a field trip in October. The inspection report, which was available online, said staff "did not initial or document the field trip form."
Green said he blames the center for failing to fix the problem and the state for not doing enough to make sure it was corrected.
"It should have been addressed," he said.
According to the inspection report, the inspector directed the center to immediately instruct staff on proper safety measures for field trips.The document does not indicate what corrective action was actually undertaken or what, if any, follow-up the state performed.
The state agency declined to comment on any of the problems identified in the inspection reports, even those not directly pertaining to the girl's death.
"We are actively investigating this incident," said spokeswoman Stacey Moore. "We don't want to comment on other pieces that could be tied to this investigation."
In later written comments, Moore said the agency "is pursuing all legal remedies in this case." In addition, she wrote, "in light of this incident, the department is in the process of drafting an emergency rule change to strengthen center oversight." She did not return a phone call seeking details.
Tatum, of Quality Care for Children, said that, after the incomplete documentation of a field trip was noted in March, she would have liked the state to order intensive training and technical assistance for the center, and to notify all the parents of children there of any dangers. But she said she understands the state is hampered by a lack of resources.
Several other problems were found during the March inspection. It noted that a 17-inch television was on top of an unsteady storage cabinet, and that an old fashioned record player was similarly stored atop an unsteady surface.The report noted that the center did not have complete files on the children’s emergency contact numbers and health issues, and that the center did not have a criminal background check for a volunteer staffer.
The inspections found repeated problems with playground safety at the center, including a lack of a protective surface beneath climbing and swinging equipment, and exposed tree roots coming through the ground.
An inspection on Feb. 17, 2010 found no documentation to show staff had received the received the required training in food preparation and nutrition planning.
A march, 20, 2008 inspection instructed staff to place latches on the doors of closets where chemicals were stored.
Green said he was never informed of any problems at the center. If anything, he said, lax record keeping is "in character" with the center's overall operations. He said that he was often asked by staff to sign in his children for the entire week, rather than signing them in day-by day.
Advocate Mindy Binderman said Jazmin's death -- coming after an incident in which an infant was left in a day care center when it closed for the day -- marks a wake-up call regarding the state's poor quality of child care.
A Cobb County daycare is under investigation for reportedly leaving a baby asleep in a crib after all staff had left on June 14. The child was not injured. A worker at a Kennesaw center was arrested in May after leaving an infant cousin in her car outside the facility. The baby, who died, was not enrolled at the center, which is not implicated in the death.
"We need more resources, more monitoring, more funding for enforcement and more assistance to providers," said Binderman, executive director of Georgia Early Education Alliance for Ready Students.
Measured against national standards, Georgia sets a low bar when regulating child care centers, according to a scorecard published in 2010 by the National Association for Child Care Resource & Referral Agencies. In particular, the state allows a higher child-to-teacher ratio than the national standard and sets lower educational benchmarks for center operators and teachers.
The state employees responsible for licensing child care centers carry a caseload of over 120 facilities; more than twice the national standard of 50-to-1, according to the report.
Moore, the agency spokeswoman, said DECAL is "able to adequately monitor licensed programs with the staff we have." She said the agency employs 77 licensing staff to monitor child care programs in the state, of which 31 work in metro Atlanta. Most child care centers are inspected about twice a year.
Another study, commissioned by state itself, found that the vast majority of licensed centers provide only low or medium quality care. Two-thirds of classrooms for infants and toddlers are low quality, according to the study, conducted by the University of North Carolina and published in 2009.
The quality was better in the pre-K age group, where 60 percent of classrooms were of medium quality. But for both age groups, only 5 percent of all classrooms were judged to be of high quality.
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