When Rules Matter More Than Common Sense, Nobody Wins

Any parent who’s tried to find a safe and stimulating day-care center knows what a wrenching search that is. To find the right place and the right people is the difference between a day of worry and guilt and one of satisfaction and reward.

It is the joy of having my 2 1/2-year-old son brag about what he learned in school, about spelling his name for fun and about his new fondness for the color red. It’s about the delight he takes in his friends. And, most of all, it’s about the respect and love he has for his teachers, a serious, professional group who are determined to bring out the best in my boy and who do so day after day.

So imagine how pleased I was last week when the State of California decided that it had my son’s interests closer to heart than I did: After a short visit to the day-care center in Echo Park, the state ordered six students expelled.

Do it within 24 hours, the state’s official representative said, or we’ll close you down.

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For a bureaucracy that sits on its hands despite horrors of one kind and another, this seemed staggeringly quick action. So you might think the inspector was spurred by parent complaints and arrived to find abusive teachers or neglected children.

Nope.

What the inspector found was that our day care had six children more than the license permitted, 18 rather than the 12 authorized for a family day care center. The license prevents that because state officials understandably do not want overpacked day-care centers putting children at risk in the event of a fire.

Never mind that the state had inspected the facility a few years back with the same number of children enrolled; never mind that the Fire Department never found any fault. Never mind that the school has three talented adults on hand to supervise those 18 children rather than the two required to supervise 12. Never mind that in recent months, social workers have cruised in and out and food service inspectors have dropped by, and that they’ve left impressed.

Never mind any of that. The state Department of Social Services’ Los Angeles Child Care East, represented by Sharon Allbritton and her supervisor, Maria Hendrix, decided to crack the whip.

After a routine inspection in which she found no serious problems of any kind, Allbritton ordered the excess children out--and she demanded that they clear out by the next morning. My son’s teacher was dumbfounded, but Allbritton brushed her off, saying that if she had problems, she should take them up with Hendrix.

The teacher was up much of that night, placing calls that hurt her heart and that stunned every parent who got one. The message: No matter how long you’ve had your child here, no matter how old or how young, they can’t come back. No one had complained of a problem, no parent, teacher, neighbor. The state had acted. That was that.

Calls to Hendrix went unreturned for two days. When she finally got caught at her desk, her position was simple and hard: State law allows just 12 children to be at a family day-care facility.

Parents argued a squishier, more human case: Whatever the number of children, there was no evidence of actual danger. Fire extinguishers are located where needed, and there’s easy access in and out of the center. No one had complained, and no one was being deceived.

Meanwhile, the agency’s actions had real ramifications--kids pulled away from their friends, classes interrupted, potty training set back, parents forced to scramble. Desperately, the parents asked for time. Since the state had allowed this center to operate under these conditions for years, couldn’t it hold off on this action for a month or two while they searched for new places? Didn’t their issues matter?

“In a word,” Hendrix told me, “no.”

Families whose children had been told to leave hit the hustings immediately, encountering the frustration of lesser prospects. Some parents whose children were still in day care agreed to keep them home for a day or two last week so the other parents could drop their kids off while they searched for a new place.

The cooperation among us was not matched by an outbreak of helpfulness within the bureaucracy. Hendrix stuck by her ruling and, along with her supervisors, declined even to visit the center.

“You must immediately reduce the number of children in care,” district manager Lois M. Petzold informed my son’s teacher in writing.

Elected officials responded much better. Aides to state legislators Richard Polanco and Wally Knox were shocked by the actions of the state officials and leaned on the bureaucrats, trying to buy time for parents to find new places. They were partially successful.

Polanco’s office wrestled the offer of a short extension from Petzold, who after first insisting that no extension was possible, then let parents know, with a wink and a nod, that no reinspection of the center was scheduled for at least a week. In other words, these kids are at such risk that they must be ejected immediately, but not at such risk that anyone plans to check on them any time soon.

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In the end, what’s left is a welter of sadness and anger. The anger is easy when confronted with officials who misunderstand their obligation to help children.

The sadness is more complicated.

It arises from that brush with realizing that we live in a time where rules too often matter more than people--an epiphany that can hit you at the DMV or in a conversation with your bank, but that packs a bigger wallop when kids are in the mix.

These state officials who kicked out my son’s classmates say they care about children. But what they demonstrate is how much they care about regulations.

What’s lost is the reason for the regulations in the first place. Anyone who visited this center would easily see what the Fire Department has understood--that it poses no special fire risk. And any thinking person who spent time there would see that these children thrive.

But in the rule book, it says anything over 12 kids is a fire risk, so these officials, from behind their desks, rule that there’s a risk; then balk at any challenge to their authority.

They don’t listen to other details because their rules say they don’t have to. They vacillate when elected officials get involved, but then give as little as they feel they can get away with.

One of the other parents at our school called in frustration one afternoon, urging Hendrix to go by and see the place before deciding whether to extend some time.

That would be interesting, Hendrix replied. But it wouldn’t make any difference.