Child-care providers concerned about how new rules regulating pools at day cares will affect their businesses packed a hearing room in Augusta Monday night to protest the changes the state adopted after 3-year-old Andrew Thurston drowned at Koala Child Kare in Westbrook.
While it’s good child-care providers are letting regulators know the impact of these new rules, the state has to place protecting the safety of small children ahead of protecting small businesses.
The new rules require pools wider than 16 feet and deeper than 4 feet to have a certified lifeguard. Smaller pools need a trained water safety attendant.
The owners of small day cares, many of which are operated from homes, say the new rules are cost prohibitive because the owners can’t afford to hire lifeguards. Some of these day-care owners have said parents have pulled their kids out this summer because they were unable to open their pools.
It’s reasonable for the state to require that day cares have someone trained in water safety manning pools, and it’s also reasonable for the state to require that that person be supervising a small number of children. It takes very little water and just a moment of inattention for a child to drown.
The state has already changed the rules in response to concerns expressed by small day-care owners at a hearing on June 11. The state dropped its requirement that pools smaller than 16 feet wide have a lifeguard.
The instructor who was supervising the children at Koala Child Kare when Andrew Thurston drowned had, at one point in time, been certified by the Red Cross as a swim instructor, but she was not certified at the time of the drowning. The boy drowned when the instructor allowed the five children she was supervising to remove their flotation devices and return to the pool. At some point, she lost sight of the child.
It’s impossible to know whether having rules such as the state is proposing now would have prevented the drowning, but in the aftermath of that tragedy everyone seemed to be in agreement that the rules and regulations the state did have in place were inadequate.
The unfortunate reality of this tragedy and the rules that might result from it are that small day cares might not be able to operate pools anymore, and that might be for the best if those day cares can’t afford to operate their pools under the safety guidelines developed.
It would seem as though even the small day cares that want to offer swimming as an activity could find a way to do it. The owners of the day cares or anyone who works at one can get certified as a water safety attendant or lifeguard. The owners of these day cares can take children to larger community pools, where lifeguards are on duty.
If possible, the state should make accommodations in its new rules for small day cares, but what has to take priority is the safety at day-care pools around the state.
Brendan Moran, editor
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