CEDAR CITY — A local child care provider spoke to the Cedar City Council recently to improve the situation for business owners like her as council members approved a “helpful” ordinance change.

On Aug. 10, the Cedar City Council approved an amendment to Chapter 26, Article 9 to adjust how square footage is calculated for in-home child care providers.

Assistant city attorney Randall McUne said that while the state controls most items concerning in-home day cares, the city has created ordinances for where they’re allowed to.

One such ordinance determined the number of children that could be cared for in the home based on the square footage of the structure’s ground floor, with a maximum of 16. This means that in a multistory home, the number of children cared for does not increase with the additional space.

In contrast, the state allows for the home’s entire square footage to be considered in the calculation but subtracts space occupied by closets, bookshelves, refrigerators and other common household items, McUne said.

The ordinance change is a compromise, McUne said, which would allow providers to calculate the square footage of two floors, putting the regulation more on par with the state’s while not requiring the building department to measure furniture.

Child care providers face challenges

Kristy DeGraaf, owner of the Learning Tree Child Care and Preschool, spoke to the council at the Aug. 3 work meeting. The 15-year child care veteran said she appreciated the council’s efforts to improve circumstances for providers.

DeGraaf has been working with various legislators to “improve support for child care providers across the state.” She said while the field is challenging, one of the top four reasons that the Erikson Institute found providers leave the field is because of systems that don’t “recognize the strengths and particular challenges of family child care.”

In a 2021 multistate study of the decline in the availability of family child care providers published by the Erikson Institute, researchers examined “in-depth factors” behind educators’ decisions to enter, stay or leave the field.

“Findings indicate that for (family child care) educators at all stages of their careers, inequitable systems presented an array of challenges that contributed to educators leaving,” the report states.

Utah is a “child care desert,” which means that availability is scarce, DeGraaf said. Because of this, she proposed ideas for Utah House Bill 15, which Governor Spencer Cox signed in March, to combat major issues facing providers based on her experiences and those of others, particularly within Cedar City.

She described instances of local providers who attempted to obtain business licenses for their child care programs finding the “extra requirements” given by the city and state to be too burdensome. Some such programs never opened.

“This is a problem across the state,” she said. “And it absolutely limits availability and accessibility of child care.”

DeGraaf suggested the council consider aligning city requirements with the state’s, so providers don’t “face additional arbitrary requirements put in place by committees or councils who have no background in child development or child care programs.”

Providers must already meet “thorough” requirements established by the Utah Department of Health and Human Services and the Office of Child Care, DeGraaf said.

She said when these obstacles prevent programs from opening or require they serve fewer clients, it “pushes children into unlicensed and unregulated care.” Such programs are not overseen by regulators and the owners are often untrained.

In contrast, licensed providers must have background checks, first aid and CPR certification and training, DeGraaf told Cedar City News in an interview.

“And so if you want to be concerned about the health and safety of children, I would ask that you consider ways to not create additional barriers and to actually take down some of the barriers that are already in place,” she said.

For instance, DeGraaf told the council that Cedar City requires providers to have a six-foot fence around their yards, whereas the state requires four feet, which creates a “significant expense” for those in neighborhoods with block walls.

Previously, in-home day cares were required to have a minimum of five parking spaces, which many providers struggled with, as most homes in Cedar City have a maximum of four spaces, McUne said. DeGraaf said the state doesn’t have a parking requirement.

“And so we had a ton of day cares that suddenly had to go put in one more parking spot,” he said.

The requirements were changed a few years ago, so homes caring for up to eight children would need two spaces, and those up to 16 would need four, McUne said.

“The only other complaints we’ve had is that parents don’t use those parking spots anyway, and so they just dropped them off on the street,” he said.

Additionally, DeGraaf said that some child care providers approaching the Board of Adjustments to open a program have been met with protest by their neighbors.

“I’ve seen entire neighborhoods show up more than once to lambaste and protest a child care program concerned that it’s going to somehow ruin the neighborhood,” she said. “When, in fact, the research shows that high-quality programs pay communities back in better mental and physical health, less crime, better academic outcomes.”

DeGraaf told Cedar City News that one of the “biggest challenges” providers face is that they are “consumed with the work that they do every day, particularly those working in-home as they must do everything.

“If you’re at a center, ideally, you have a director and an assistant director and an administrative person and somebody doing the food program and janitorial — you have a lot of people helping you,” she said.

While  DeGraaf said center-based staff is still underpaid, family child care providers complete all the work themselves, including maintenance and janitorial work and many work 60-70 hours per week.

Because of this, many providers lack the time and resources necessary to do advocacy work, DeGraaf said, adding that “somebody has to speak for the people that are actually doing the work.”

“Ultimately it’s about the kids, right? But if we’re not taking good care of their caregivers, the children are going to suffer and we’re not doing right for the children in our community,” she said.

Removing barriers

DeGraaf said the ordinance change would be “helpful,” as some providers purchased larger homes expecting to use the entire basement floor but because of the way square footage was calculated, the number of children they were allowed to care for decreased.

“Which just didn’t make any sense,” she said.

Councilmember R. Scott Phillips asked if DeGraaf would be willing to work with the city over the next few months and improve child care requirements.

“We want it to be safe,” he said. “We want to make sure that it’s a good environment for neighbors and the child care provider and the parents, but I think we’d be open to certainly listen to ideas to make it better.”

DeGraaf said that Cedar is “not the worst city in the state” and that some others have “significantly more barriers.”

“Which is why I think it is an opportunity for us to lead out and say, ‘Let’s do what we can to help support families in our communities,'” she said. “And this is a family-centered community with so many children. And … Most people with children need child care and it needs to be accessible and … high quality and when providers are so hyper-focused on all of these different barriers that they have to overcome. it becomes very challenging for them to create those high-quality environments.”

Councilmember Tyler Melling said that the state’s regulations are “onerous” and he was comfortable approving the change with the understanding that the city would continue to work on improving the situation with DeGraaf.

Additionally, Melling said Utah law is “trying to get cities and counties out of the business of regulating day cares.”

Melling said he’d like to amend the city’s ordinances so they are more dependent on state requirements to “the greatest extent possible so that as those are amended, we’re automatically in conformance.”

Ultimately DeGraaf said she would ideally like to see the ordinances require providers to follow only state licensing guidelines, which are “really comprehensive,” and to remove additional barriers.

“And truly support quality care and make our work a little easier, instead of more complicated,” she said.

The entire discussion and ordinance change approval can be viewed on the Cedar City Council’s YouTube channel. Click here for the work meeting and here for the action meeting.

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