But you need top notch political connections to do so. Here are some excerpts from an article that appeared in the 9/17/06 edition of The State, entitled, “How money, influence killed S.C. child-care reform”
South Carolina’s largest child-care operator has been paid more than $28 million since 2002 by the state Department of Social Services to provide services to low-income or special-needs children.
Critics say those payments came at the same time that Dennis Drew was working inside the state’s political system to quash tighter child-care regulations that would cost his business money.
Drew is founder and operator of The Sunshine House, the nation’s seventh-largest chain. He serves on a state board overseeing the regulation of his business, is on a state panel charged with overseeing education reform in South Carolina and has close ties to Gov. Mark Sanford as an adviser, former staffer and donor.
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Drew says he supports improved child care. But, he adds, those improvements cannot come solely on the financial backs of private companies.
Others say Drew uses his power : influence derived fromhis closeness to state leaders and market share : to oppose efforts to improve child care.
They say Drew:
• Opposed the creation of a state-run rating system for child-care centers and other proposed changes in how child care is overseen in South Carolina.
• Has a conflict of interest, collecting millions of dollars from the state to provide child care while helping to oversee how his child-care business is regulated.
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Last year, Social Services proposed a series of changes in child-care regulations to lawmakers, who must sign off on the changes.
One regulation would have lowered the maximum students-to-teacher ratio in all age groups over a period of years and capped the maximum number of children in any age group that could be in one room.
For example, current rules say there must be one teacher for every 13 children, ages 3 to 4. The proposed rules would have required a teacher for every 11 children and required there be no more than 33 children in one room.
Private child-care centers, led by The Sunshine House and the S.C. Child Care Association, succeeded in killing the cap on group sizes, according to news reports of the debate in the Legislature. …
–Ann Bartow
