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CAEL QIS Design Subcommittee Highlights

California Early Learning Quality Improvement System (CAEL QIS) Advisory Committee

Design Ideas for Licensing, Quality Rating, and Improvement Systems Subcommittee

Dennis Vicars, Chair
Consuelo Espinosa, Vice-Chair

Subcommittee Meeting Highlights

The CAEL QIS Design Ideas for Licensing, Quality Rating, and Improvement Systems Subcommittee met on March 24, 2010, at the California Department of Education, 1430 N Street, Sacramento, CA, from 10:00 am to 3:00 pm with a video conference site at Riverside County Office of Education, 300 Market Street, Riverside, CA, plus 50 video streaming sites. Additional information such as the meeting agenda and work plan are available at CAEL QIS Web page.

Introductions:

Welcome and introductions were provided by Dennis Vicars, Subcommittee Chair and CEO of Human Services Management Corporation/PACE. The meeting opened with a brief review of work completed and approved to date by the CAEL QIS Advisory Committee.

Overview: Dennis Vicars presented the following:

The Design Subcommittee’s charge under SB 1629- Steinberg 2008 to develop options for California’s rating structure and process with support systems to improve quality over time.

Upcoming meeting dates and work plan topic areas:

QRS Design Block System and first 5 Elements (Family Involvement, Ratio and Group Size, Teaching and Learning, Program Leadership, and Staff Education and on-going Professional Development) for California QRS.

Decisions made by CAEL QIS Advisory Committee, determined California’s QRS will include the following factors:

At the March 2, 2010 CAEL QIS Advisory Committee meeting, the following Action Items were approved:

The Design Elements related to California’s Quality Rating Structure work groups for the day were outlined and Subcommittee members were given instructions on the Work Group Process. The Design Elements for the work groups were:

The following is the reporting out of the workgroups for the day. We will continue to refine this work at our next Design Subcommittee meeting.

Program Leadership Workgroup

Objective:  To identify a tool to assess Program Leadership for the Quality Rating Matrix.

Presentation: Over view of the PAS and BAS Scales, Kathy Alvarado, Riverside Child Care Consortium

PAS = Program Administration Scale
BAS = Business Administration Scale for FCC Providers
Discussion

Discussions regarding PAS/BAS were conducted separately and the entire group was reconvened after lunch to discuss and develop recommendations.

Riverside
Agreed that PAS and BAS were valuable in assessing program administration, but had issues recommending the tools:

Sacramento
Recommendations
Riverside
Sacramento
Conclusions

Clarification was needed to understand the role of the Program Leadership Sub-Committee and their charge as directed by the

CAEL QIS Committee. Decision was made to continue discussion at the next meeting April 20, 2010 for the purposes of clarifying the elements of program administration, identify potential program administration assessment tools, and provide recommendations on assessment tools and implementation on the quality matrix.

Teaching and Learning Workgroup

The workgroup for Teaching and Learning finished the entries for the five tiers. The following is the result of the work completed.

Use "ECERS Family" as the tool (ITERS-R, ECERS-R, FDCRS); use CLASS, PARS to measure teacher/child interactions at Tiers 3, 4 & 5
Integrate Infant/Toddler & Preschool; Foundations/Frameworks integrated into the program as measured by the Education Plan

Representatives from nutrition programs provided input on criteria important to nutrition, health, and physical development. The additional criteria, beyond the integration of nutrition, health, and physical development in the Foundations and Frameworks, are: 1) use of the meal pattern by family child care homes as well as centers (currently included in Title 22); and 2) participation in the CACFP at Tier 3 for programs when 25% or more of the children are eligible for free-reduced priced meals. These items were referred to the Licensing and Program Leadership work groups respectively.

Ratios and Group Size Workgroup

Family Child Care Home (FCCH) (Title 22)

The workgroup on Ratio and Group Size discussed ratio and group size recommendations for family child care home providers. The consensus of the group was to keep the ratios and group sizes the same as current Title 22 requirements. Those requirements are described below.

Preliminary Option for FCCH Mixed-Age Groups: Infant*/Toddler*/Prekindergarten*/School-Age*
Small Family Child Care Homes
  1. 1:4 infants including own children under 10 years of age, OR

  2. 1:6 children, no more than 3 of whom are infants, including own children under 10 years old, OR

  3. 1:8 if all following conditions are met:
    • At least 1 child is enrolled and attending kindergarten or elementary* and a second child is at least 6 years old,
    • No more than 2 infants are cared for when caring for more than 6 children,
    • Licensee notifies all parents, and
    • Licensee obtains written consent of property owner.
Large Family Child Care Homes
  1. 2:12 if no more than 4 infants including licensee’s and attendant’s children under 10 years old, OR

  2. 2:14 if all following conditions are met:
    • At least 1 child is enrolled and attending kindergarten or elementary* and a second child is at least 6 years old,
    • No more than 3 infants are cared for when caring for more than 12 children,
    • Licensee notifies all parents, and
    • Licensee obtains written consent from property owner.

*per AB 529, Chaptered 744, Statutes of 2003

Additional discussion included the following comments:

  1. More input from family child care providers was needed
  2. Workgroup asked to make this a preliminary recommendation pending more information from other interested provider groups
  3. Other elements of the QRS would describe quality improvement and be rated on the QRS, such as Staff Education and Training, Teaching and Learning (to include the ERS family), Program Leadership, and Family Involvement.
  4. The workgroup wanted to see more opportunities for involvement of license-exempt family child care home providers.
  5. The workgroup strongly recommended support for implementation.

Licensing- Review Title 22 Standards and Monitoring Workgroup

The workgroup started with a review of a PowerPoint on Child Care Licensing Overview presented by Venus Garth. The group had a discussion on many aspects of Licensing and made the following recommendations:

For the next meeting the group will continue to discuss:

The meeting was adjourned at 3:00 pm with Dennis Vicars thanking everyone for their input into the Design Subcommittee. The next meeting is in Sacramento at the California Department of Education on April 20, 2010, with video-conference site at Riverside County Office of Education, in addition to video streaming option.

Questions:  Child Development Division | 916-322-6233
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