Business

Town Trying to work with daycares to uphold their reputations

By Chelsea Rice

BROOKLINE—Waiting for their parents to pick them up from daycare, a group of 10 toddlers on a recent afternoon on the stoop of a Pleasant Street apartment, unaware that their fun day violated town bylaws.

Family daycare facilities such as this one operate out of private residences all over the town. When Alex Shabelsky, an owner of a family daycare, proposed to change the town's zoning bylaws this fall at a Planning Board meeting, the town discovered that 10 state-licensed large family daycares have been violating the town's regulations for years because Brookline does not allow the large daycares, which care for 10 children, versus the six children town limit.

Owners of daycare centers feel that the town should regulate these large family daycares, which are run out of people’s homes, for the safety of the children.

“[Daycare is] something people need,” said Etty Brown, owner of Etty’s Early Child Development Center on Dwight Street. “But without regulations, everyone would go crazy.”

Because of a demand, the state regulations changed in 2003 to allow facilities zoned as large family daycares to have 10 children with two attendants, instead of only six children with one attendant.

Massachusetts did not inform the towns of the regulation change, but continued to distribute licenses to daycares in Brookline that were not zoned by the town to have more than six children, said Jeff Levine, the director of Planning and Community Development .

This week, the Board of Selectmen will discuss this disconnect and Shabelsky’s petition, Warrant Article 14, to match the town's regulations with the state's.

“Those people licensing, as much as I am aware, are following the regulations of the state, and always have been,” said Nancy Witherell at the Department of Elementary and Early Childhood Education.

The facilities outside of the town’s bylaws worry they will have to close if Warrant Article 14 does not pass at the Board of Selectmen’s meeting this week.

“The petitioner [Shabelsky] may not have realized what he’s gotten into,” said Selectman Betsy DeWitt.

“Now, in the middle of the year, over 60 families could lose care providers and employees will lose jobs,” said Shabelsky, who owns a large family daycare on Hammond Street. “When I took a petition around for this change, only one [family daycare] provider would sign it, because they are afraid.”

Because selectmen are concerned that the state may not be inspecting the larger facilities adequately, an 18-month provision is proposed to allow these facilities time to register have their facilities inspected for the four-child increase, which would take into consideration the concerns of the neighborhood higher safety standards, said officials.

“The goal is not to put people out of business but to provide stability for transition,” DeWitt said.

This grace period would also allow the daycare centers avoid challenges when they apply for new licenses with the state.

“I don’t think they were trying to consciously get around the town; it was simply a change in the state law and the town not catching up with it,” said Levine.