After two lawsuits and many complaints, Montgomery County has proposed a new set of regulations for selecting which child care providers get to operate in MCPS buildings.
The county’s Community Use of Public Facilities (CUPF) has published the proposed rules, which will be reviewed by the County Council. CUPF has been under pressure from child care providers to update the way it picks which providers get to operate before and after school programs in MCPS space.
Many Child Care Service providers have complained about conflicts of interest, unfair standards and principals with too much sway in a recent rebidding process that saw some longtime providers ousted from the schools they operated in with no apparent issues.
The Wonders Child Care Center was rebidding for its longtime space in North Chevy Chase Elementary School in May 2012 when it says a former parent who had had a legal dispute with the provider was included on the school’s selection committee. The scores from six members of the committee, on a 100-point scale, were 100, 100, 88, 85, 81 and 50, according to a complaint submitted in a memo by County Councilmember Hans Riemer.
The memo also includes anonymous complaints from providers alleging a principal told an incumbent child care provider up for rebid that the provider could buy her a commercial popcorn machine for school events.
One provider said it was told “that parents don’t care about quality and that ‘old, white women,’ should not represent your center, should not be part of the process.”
A provider alleged it lost space in a school and was told afterward by the school’s principal that “he hated the process and felt the whole thing was scripted to get a certain result.” A provider told Riemer it was told “to put more minorities on our interview committee, to have a sales-type person be present at your interview, change your name, that tuition was too expensive” and “to be perkier,” among other things.
Ginny Gong, executive director of the CUPF, said the department decided to create a new bidding process in 2007 to give other providers an opportunity. Earlier this year, she labeled some of the accusations in the Riemer memo as misinformation.
The result of one lawsuit over the selection process was a Montgomery County Circuit Court decision that found the new bidding system was not the legal way to conduct the process and that state law assigned the responsibility to each local Board of Education. In January 2013, the Montgomery County Board of Education passed a resolution to give the responsibility back to the governing board that runs CUPF.
Out of that, a work group including Gong, leaders of child care providers and other stakeholders was created with the goal of ironing out draft regulations to improve the process.
The proposed regulations require each member of a school’s child care selection committee — made up of staff, parents, administrators or “other responsible individuals” — to disclose any vested interests or prior relationships with any of the applicants.
The regulations also dictate that nonprofit child care providers be given first preference and that the terms for each provider’s stay at each school would be lengthened to seven years, instead of five.
CUPF is taking public comments on the new regulations until Sept. 30. Written comments must be submitted by September 30, 2014, to Elizabeth Habermann, Community Use of Public Facilities, (CUPF), 255 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland, 20850; 240-777-2713; Email: elizabeth[dot]habermann[at]montgomerycountymd[dot]gov.
