Administrative hearing with state scheduled

By Jason Emerson

Editor

For the second time in less than five months, Cazenovia Children’s House has left a child unattended and been investigated by the state Office of Children and Family Services. In addition, the state has moved to revoke CCH’s license and an administrative hearing has been scheduled. The OCFS has also removed CCH from its referral list of approved child care facilities.

This latest issue with CCH, however, goes farther than an unattended child. The OCFS website shows that CCH received three inspection violations on Feb. 6, one of which was for an unsupervised child. A look at the entire available inspection history of CCH shows that the local day care center has received more than one dozen operational violations since 2015 — many of them repeat offenses for the same action/inaction.

After first refusing to comment on the matter, CCH Executive Director Sierra Neil and the CCH Board of Directors issued a statement late Friday night in which they said, “We take our obligations under state law and our license extremely seriously, and err on the side of self-reporting any matter. The Center remains open and we are working through the appropriate regulatory process. … We will also continue to vigilantly carryout out our extremely important obligations to safeguard the children entrusted to our care.”

“The safety of children is OCFS’s top priority and leaving a child unsupervised is unacceptable,” said Craig Smith, OCFS assistant director for public information. “OCFS immediately investigated the most recent incident and moved to revoke the program’s license. The program has the right to request an administrative hearing. OCFS’s regulations and oversight provide for enhanced monitoring designed to give families access to safe, quality child care.”

This is the second time in less than five months at CCH has been cited for failure to supervise a child — in fact, both incidents of failed supervision occurred with the same child, who no longer attends the child care and pre-school facility that accepts children ages six weeks to 12 years old, according to a CCH parent familiar with both incidents who asked not to be named.

The first incident, which occurred in September 2017, was the result of a CCH teacher losing sight of one of the facility’s students “for about a minute,” CCH officials said at the time. The teacher responsible was suspended, OCFS suspended and proposed to revoke the Cazenovia Children’s House license due to a failure of the Center to provide competent supervision and the program was fined $3,500.

CCH was allowed to re-open after it submitted a revised supervision plan.

The second incident, which occurred in early February this year, was “brief and wholly contained within two connected classrooms,” and both rooms “were staffed with teachers at the time of the incident,” according to a CCH statement. There were “serious consequences” to staff as a result of the incident, the statement said.

The officials stated that the CCH self-reported the incident to the appropriate licensing authorities, as they did in response to the September 2017 incident.

The failure to properly supervise a child was one of three violations against CCH found by OCFS during a Feb. 6 inspection. The CCH was also cited for failure to keep corridors, aisles, and approaches to exits unobstructed at all times, and failure of staff and volunteers of the child day care center to be familiar with the OCFS regulations and policies governing such programs, and the child care center’s policies.

According to OCFS records, available for public viewing on the agency’s website (click here to view, search under “child care” and then search for “Cazenovia Children’s House), Cazenovia Children’s House has a long list of state inspection violations going back to 2015 — many of the violations having occurred multiple times through the years.

In addition to the Feb. 6 violations, CCH violations of OCFS policies and procedures include 15 citations over a 24-month period, with violations cited in eight separate months. These violations were in areas including health and safety issues, administrative policies, medical procedures and medicinal administration, storage procedures and records management.

Comparatively, other day care providers in communities neighboring Cazenovia have fewer OCFS violations within the time frames listed on the OCFS website:

•Brenda’s Daycare, Chittenango — No violations since September 2016.

•Chittenango Child Care Center — 11 violations since March 2016.

•Children’s Center at Morrisville State College — Two violations since April 2016.

•MVCAA Morrisville Head Start — One violation since February 2017.

•Manlius Day School in Manlius — Three violations since December 2015.

•SonShine Child Care Center, Manlius — 21 violations since April 2016.

•Manlius YMCA — 11 violations since October 2016.

•Fayetteville YMCA — Eight violations since April 2016.

As of press time, the CCH violations that occurred in 2015, 2016 and some of the 2017 are all listed as “corrected” on the OFCS website. The October 2017 and February 2018 violations are listed as “not corrected.”

According to the OCFS, while an enforcement action is pending against a day care facility that facility may continue to operate until a final decision has been rendered by an administrative law judge or by a court, or until the enforcement action has been resolved.

If CCH loses its administrative hearing — the date of which has not been scheduled — the OCFS will rescind the facility’s license or registration to operate the child day care program. Such revocation is final, and the program “may no longer operate,” according to OCFS information.

Cazenovia Children’s House, located at 2757 Route 20 East in Cazenovia, is a not-for-profit organization that has been providing childcare and preschool education for families in Cazenovia since 1970.