Group begins project to rate N. Idaho child-care providers
COEUR D’ALENE, Idaho A pilot project by a group that wants to establish a five-star rating system for child-care providers in Idaho is entering its second year.IdahoSTARS Quality Child Care Rating System allows child care providers to volunteer to participate in the statewide project.It’s an effort to improve the quality of care and offer parents more information about where to send their children. The group hopes to have the rating system in place by 2009 for care providers who want to participate.More than 70 facilities volunteered this year, and 29 were randomly selected to take part, said Martha Anderson, IdahoSTARS regional quality consultant in Hayden.She said the voluntary rating system is important because Idaho has few child-care regulations.Day care centers with fewer than seven children are not regulated by the state. Idaho lawmakers in the most recent session killed a bill that would have set standards - such as criminal background checks for workers and annual health and fire inspections - for centers with four or more unrelated children.”This is really grass roots,” Anderson told The Spokesman-Review. “We want to help individual providers improve their quality.”Fingerprints Children’s Center in Lewiston is one of the facilities taking part in the program this year.”I’m completely supportive of the idea of it,” said Brooke Pedersen, the center’s director. “Hopefully parents will see that centers that made an effort to be in the system will be the quality centers.”An IdahoSTARS mentor will work with child-care providers to develop a plan to improve, as well as apply for grants to make improvements.Once that work is finished, the providers would receive the STAR rating.Because it’s a voluntary program, Anderson said, it would be up to the day-care provider to decide whether to make the results public.Anderson said IdahoSTARS officials believe it’s important the state have a quality day-care system because good early childhood experiences lead to success in school and greater earning potential as adults.IdahoSTARS, according to its Web site, is a joint-project between the University of Idaho’s Center on Disabilities and Human Development, and the Idaho Association for the Education of Young Children.
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