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Sonoma County, a dynamic county combining agriculture and industry, City and country, creating unique and varied challenges for its citizens join us as we present some of the information and services provided by the county of Sonoma to help us as we move into the 21st century. Welcome

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to Sonoma County in the nineties with your host, Dana rico and Gina Lash. Hello, I'm dana do rico and welcome to Sonoma County in the nineties. Today I have with me NJ kimball and she is the director of a Children's place, which is a child care

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center that is located at the Sonoma County Administration Center. So let's join NJ and find out all about the child care center at Sonoma County. NJ. It's good to have you on the show. You are the director of our child care center. Can you tell me

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first a little bit about yourself and your background and how you came to be the director of the child care center. The programming at the childcare center is run by the Y W. C. A. And I'm an employee of the Y W. C. A. I've been

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in childcare for 23 years, of course it started when I was really little. But um, I have been a director of various childcare centers for the last 15 years and I wanted to work really close to home and this center is so I asked if I

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could become the director when they were looking for a new director and they chose me and I've been there almost three years now. Can you tell me, NJ who supports or sponsors, the childcare center? The childcare center is supported by parent fees of the parents whose

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Children are attending the center as well as there is some uh subsidy from the state of California and our building is owned by Sonoma County and they maintenance it and that is actually a great savings and subsidy to us. We do rent it back from them,

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but it's had a really reduced rent and so therefore Sonoma County is really helping to make sure that this center is supported. I see I was under the assumption it was just for Sonoma County employees and their Children, but it's not, it's open to all the

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public, correct? Yes. Can you tell me a little bit about that, how this criteria or this format is put together for Sonoma County employees. Sonoma County employees receive a discount. It is on a sliding scale, There are community fees and there are also on a sliding

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scale. Um, generally if you come from the community and you want five days a week for a month, uh the childcare center cost $400 if you are from the county employees that same uh, time would with us would be $375. If you had a gross household

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income under $40,000, then the fee would be even lower at $325 a month. So there is a tiered effect depending on if you're a county employee or for the community. So there is quite an advantage because this is on a monthly payment schedule versus a weekly,

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which there are 4.3 weeks in a month. Right? Yes, you will recoup some of your costs because if you pay weekly for childcare, you end up paying an extra month's worth of fees that you don't, if you go to to a child care center that charges

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by the month. I see. What type of Children do you have? A child care center? We have 34 and five year olds. Uh they're preschoolers and they are Children who are ambulatory and able to move around. We are building that's easily accessible to handicapped. And so

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if you were in a wheelchair, the building would work just great for you. But at this point we don't have anybody like that. Um and we do ask that Children become toilet trained and so that's the only criteria for entrance into. How many Children do you

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have at the center were licensed for 45. We have 37 in attendance right now. Okay, so you have room for some more. If, if any of our viewers out there are looking for childcare, that's true. How many. Um Well, first I want to ask you, where

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exactly is the childcare located. Where is the center? The address? We're in the administration complex. Um we're on pollen drive, which is just up the street from the redwood credit union were across the street from data processing. It's 2614 pollen and we're around the corner from

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the parking for the courthouse. So it's 2614 pollen drive. And is there a phone number where our viewers could call if they're interested in finding more about finding out more information about the child care center? Yes, you can call 5 to 734 to zero. And actually

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you can call it any time because our message machine is on day and night. We are there from 7 30 to 5 30. So you'll get a human voice some time in there. See what are the hours of operation of the childcare center? We're open from

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7 30 to 5 15 monday through friday. And what about holidays and when there's summer vacation? Easter vacation, which is easter vacation? Um We're there all through the summer. We are closed for major holidays like Memorial Day, july 4th um christmas, christmas, christmas Eve, New Year's

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New Year's Eve but were in operation 280 days of the year. Okay. That's kind of the vital statistics in case anybody's interested. Now I would like to ask you to um just bring more information to our viewers. What qualifications of the staff. Um What are the

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qualifications of your staff that you have on board? We're very fortunate because all our staff aside from one person has a bachelor's degree as well as early childhood education units. Even our food coordinator, our cook has a bachelor's degree. So we have um, the Children surrounded

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with adults who are really interested in learning and are lifelong learners. Um The teachers also have a lot of experience. Two of my teachers have been directors of other child care centers at another time in their life. One has a master's degree in psychology, another teacher,

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volunteers at another child care center on the board and as president of the board. So it is a staff that's very interested in early childhood and want to make it career. Are these long term long term employees? One of my employees has been there five years.

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Two of us myself included are coming up on our third year and three others are have been there a year and a half. Okay, so and about, we're talking about your staff. How many do you have? So what is the ratio Of adults to Children at

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the Childcare Center? We have five teachers. And if we're fully enrolled at 40, uh there will be eight Children in each teachers group. Um as it is, we have 37. So there are some groups that are a little less than even eight. Uh, so the ratio

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would be one adult to eight Children at our maximum. I see just before the show, we were discussing the child care center and you brought me back to my childhood. It was amazing you find out all of these things that you have forgotten that these Children

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remind you of your childhood now. Um a good example was you are watching Moving Mountain be removed right across the street um on the hillside there North Mendocino Avenue. Uh can you tell me what other additional services are provided at the child care facility along with

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these educational things. You were telling me about that your, you had a construction week because you're watching moving Mountain. We do try to take our curriculum from what's happening around us right now. We're doing pond life because one of the parents brought in poly wogs. We

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will take field trips, take a walk down to the little creek in the county center complex and look for poly wogs and there are decks down there. Um additionally at the center itself we are tied in with nips which is non intensive preschool speech and so

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if a child comes and they are unable to be understood then we can hook them into nips and we can make sure that they get speech therapy. We also serve a hot lunch every day. So we have a food service. There are lunches and breakfasts and

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snacks are planned by a food coordinator. So there is a nutritional component. Um We also are able to enjoy the services of uh other community members who come out and uh are with us for example, I was thinking of the day of caring. Um that happens

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in the fall they come and they do work with us. Uh, make sure our facility is up to snuff and fix things as well as have parties for the Children. Um, we are tied into the volunteer center so we receive volunteers through them, both teenagers and

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adults. Um, we're tied in with Cardinal Newman and Ursuline High schools. So teenagers are volunteering through through them. Uh, the Humane Society comes out and brings animals to us. So we're able to receive a lot of services from outside the community that enrich the Children's lives.

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You were mentioning that you take a lot of field trips, you take walks and you walk by the christmas tree farm and that you watched the Jack Rabbit down in the creek that lives there. It was kind of interesting that all these little minor things are

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major or deals at your facility. Yes. And because some of the parents of the Children work in the vicinity were able to even go into the county complex into the offices and take field trips. We've been over to the assessor's office and we've seen the machine

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that makes maps and we've had Halloween treats given to us by the assessor's office and other departments in the fiscal center. And it's real fun for us to have people come in and have lunch with us to some parents have been able to drop by and

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have lunch with us. And that's the wonderful thing about being located in the complex because the parents are really close to the Children. That is that's great. This is open to the public to anyone who cares to use the facility for child care as long as

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there are openings available. See I was under the impression it was limited to county employees only, but that's not the case at all. Which that's wonderful. What is a typical daily schedule at the childcare center? Can you give us a day, what what you can expect

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in the morning when the child's dropped off and and just go through the day. I can and, and I will be giving times because one of the things that we've found that gives Children a stability and the sense of structure is to really do the same

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thing at the same time every day and it's not boring because Children are not boring, but at 7 30 to 8 30 it's a free play inside and they have about five different activities that they can go to and spend however long they want to, you

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know, some attention spans are two minutes and some are 20 and at 8 30 we clean up, we have breakfast and we breakfast together and that's cleaned up at nine and then we go outside, we have two wonderful yards, one is very large front yard and

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that's usually the one we use at 9 to 10. We clean up again, I want to emphasize we clean up every time we change activities so that the Children get in that habit at 10 o'clock, we go to a circle time and in circle time. It's

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sort of our, our family gathering time of the day where we see who's here because everyone attends, we find out what we're going to be doing for the day, what lunches, that's a high point of our day and if anyone has any special story or song

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they'd like to share. We do that at that time. We talk about the weather and do the calendar and we find out if it's anyone's birthday or any other special event that's gonna happen, we need to break here. So hold off for a birthday time and

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we'll be right back, stay tuned, we'll be right back. More than 140,000 americans have joined Peace Corps returning home, their experiences last a lifetime meet lily Lindsay, a teacher in Virginia and scott Truax, a mayor and business owner in colorado. The challenges that I face as

00:15:08.430 - 00:15:19.380

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changing America and changing the world Peace Corps the toughest job you'll ever love. Hello, I'm dana d'Errico and welcome back to Sonoma County in the nineties. I'm here with NJ kimball and we're just at 10 o'clock in the day of a Children's place school. Okay. At

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the end of circle time we always begin and end with the same opening and closing song and after we've seen the closing song that Children are excused by their little family groups. We have five family groups and they have the colorful names of yellow sunflowers, brown

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bunnies, green growing things, red octopuses and blue stars and the blue stars could be excused first and then they would go to their learning area for the day and that changes each day of the week. Um, the Children are all exposed to art, science large motor,

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which is climbing, jumping small motor, which is also pre math dramatic play all those areas within the week. And they rotate around our facility that way And at 11:00 they stop, have a little story and a small snack. Then they go outside until noon and really

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do a lot of playing. Real intense playing. And then at noon we have our lunch and then we brush our teeth, go to the bathroom and take a nap, which is a real fun time of the day for teachers and the Children rest until two. Not

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everyone sleeps. Um, at two o'clock, the non sleepers are allowed to get up and any time between two and three Children awakened at three o'clock we do make sure that all the Children are awake and go outside again Have a bigger snack at 3 30. And

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that's also a time when we might have another circle. Not every day, but sometimes we do, particularly if we have a birthday, we do birthday circle at that time. And then at 4 15 a new activity is presented, could be drawing with chalk, it could be

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using a real tiny little cars in an intricate pattern, whatever. And at five o'clock we come back inside and we do some kind of real quiet game until our parents get us at 5 15. Well I'm just two doors down. I want to come and take

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that nap. It sounds very inviting. Yes it is. And we really do like to have visitors and we particularly welcome anybody at a lunch time. You can come and sit in a little tiny chair at a little tiny table. But we have wonderful food because we

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have a fabulous cook. And we do have a multicultural lunch once a month. It's the last friday of each month. And we do invite everyone to come to that. Just call first so that we can prepare for you. But we've done china and Barbados and Vietnam

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and Yugoslavia and Ireland and England. It's a country that usually has some tie to someone who's attending the childcare there from that area. Their ancestors are. And um we have music and we get books out of the library that tell us about that. But our multicultural

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lunches are open for everyone at any time. Oh, wow. And that's the last friday of every month. That's great. Do you have parent conferences? Yes, we do parent conferences twice a year, Once in january and once in july during those parent conferences, the parent will be

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with the small group teacher and that time we show them a portfolio and in that portfolio they'll be work from the beginning of the six months to the end of the six months so that their parents can figure out how the child is developing. The teacher

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will give them some clues as to what to look for. But we have artwork, we have stories, we have, um, writings that the Children's have produced by dictation in there and they're able to see how their child has grown during that time. Also we include um,

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stories that other teachers have gathered about that child. So that, um, it's not even just that one teacher's observations, it's all the teachers observations that go into that parent conference and at that time we can let them know it. There is a wide range of development

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for Children, but we can let them know if they seem to be lag behind in a particular area and really bring that area up to the parents uh, notice I see our parents encouraged to spend time at the center and when they do spend the time,

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what can they expect to be doing? Well, they can expect to be going along with all the action that's happening. Um, we do enjoy having parents and we can have parents come for all day if they really choose to or an hour or so. Sometimes the

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noise and really can frustrate parents after a while. But uh, yes, we'd love to have parents come with us come with us during small group time. We've had a lot of parents join our circle time, which is a 20 minute period from 10 to 10 20.

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That's a really good time for parents to be there because they see everybody at the same time. We invite parents to lunch as I've mentioned before. And then birthday circles. We invite parents to come to birthday circles. We have a real special little birthday circle where

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we talk about how the child grew inside their mom and then they were born and how they, they've developed over there um, years of life and it's real fun to have the mom or dad there at that time. So we can say, you know, you remember

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this and that and sometimes they will give a little antidote of the child's really early years. So we'd love to have parents come. It sounds like that. Everything is based on an educational format. Um, what other educational aspects are there at the facility besides, you know,

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the cultural cooking you were born, you grew in your mother's womb. What, what are, are there any other, well, we make sure that we're trying to meet the needs of the whole child. We do have one room on our side of our school that we use

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like a gym. And we do make sure that we've exposed them to climbing, running, jumping, hopping, walking, skipping, crawling all of that. We have motor development. Yes. We have checklists that we go by to make sure that the Children are being exposed in the science area.

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We're mostly cooking and gardening. We have two raised beds and we have just finished our bold plants and now we'll be planting our vegetable plants. So we do have something in our beds all year long. So you grow your own vegetables in the summer. You'll cook

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them. Yes. We have made soup out of our vegetables before or salad. We've done that too. Um We do have art area and we try really hard to have the art come within from within the child. And so there's a lot of creative collages because they

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not quite doing line drawings yet, but you'll see those as murals on our walls and we try to send home a lot of artwork so that parents are encouraged by the development of their Children. Um, the things that parents don't normally see are these wonderful block

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structures where the blocks are brought out and cars and trucks and little people and houses and they make all these wonderful cities and then we have to clean them up or the fun time that we have in the Dramatic Play center where we try on costumes

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were actually trying on occupations actually. And we pretend to be mom or dad or the aunt or the brother. We go to the store and we have plastic food there and dishes and we prepare meals. And so we're practicing being adults. That's sweet. That's very cute.

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Are there any volunteer possibilities at the center? Yes. People can come over and read to us at any time. We just love to have, we have a couch indoors. We have a couch outdoors. We have a rocking chair so a volunteer could sit on the couch,

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bring out a book and a couple of kids will come and listen at any time of the day except for nap of course. And uh, we've just really enjoyed a lot of support from county employees, county employees who, who want to just recycle paper will bring

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it to us. And we've had some wonderful long rolls of paper that the county employees have sent over to us. So even volunteering excess material is a real help to us because we go through a lot lot of materials because they're trying to expose the Children

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to many different kinds of opportunities. I bet that you would go through quite a bit of materials and things is their supervision when these volunteers are are there. You do have supervision over the volunteer. We have a whole volunteer orientation that we go through and a

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packet of papers that you would sign And volunteers are never left alone with Children. There will always be a teacher supervising you and the Children. That's great that we need to wing it. Yeah, that would really, yeah, that's a big relief. Um, do community groups get

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involved with the center also outside the county complex? Yes. Um, Exchange Bank has come and done a christmas party for us and and given us christmas gifts as I mentioned before. The day of caring, um, is really a wonderful day when community groups come in. Um,

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we've also had, uh, people volunteer from Sonoma State and come and read stories to us. People have come and done and have done drama presentations before. Um, it's wonderful that we have an ongoing relationship even with Hewlett Packard who has donated a new computer for us

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through a grant process, but we are well supported by the community and the county at christmas time has been particularly helpful to us sponsoring some families who might ordinarily not have much of a christmas. Um, but county employees whose Children do go to the childcare center

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have received gifts and food. And uh, it's been fabulous. Memorial Hospital has also uh, donated some things to us as well as community hospital and we've been really the recipient of a lot of community goodwill. Well, that's great that there's that kind of rapport there. Do

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they have Children? Any employees from these organizations have Children at the center or is it just a volunteer? They know that it's there and yes, it's, it's just a volunteer effort. They don't necessarily have Children at the center. Can you tell me NJ and tell our

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viewers what is the value? Um, all the value of a 3 to 5 year old being in a preschool environment, kindergarten teachers have told me in the past that they know who's been at preschool because those Children are socially adept and once they are socially adept,

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they're not worrying about the relationships with other people and they're free to learn more abstract and academic things. Uh, the Children learn, uh, non violent conflict resolution. They learn to appreciate other Children and their different, uh, backgrounds and cultures. Uh, the Children really are exposed in

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a very enriching way to things that they may want to really get into later as uh, an older child. But we can talk about just about anything at preschool on a very simple level. And it's wonderful to see the Children developing on their own starting to

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look for letters in print to find their own name to account numbers and associate a written number with how many objects around the table. It's really an enriching time for Children to be with other Children. Um, maybe you can help our viewers out what, what should

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you look for if you are looking for a good wholesome preschool for your child. Are there any telltale signs of um checklist, kind of what to look for? Well, uh, licensing really does help when you are licensed, you have um, staff that have had their fingerprints

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cleared and there's been a criminal record check. Also, um, cpR and first aid have been required if you are licensed beyond that. Uh, there are some uh educational requirements and that helps a lot because teachers who learn are really interested in extending that learning process for

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the Children who are underneath them. Uh Also, I would look for uh staff to child ratio. You want to have as many adults who are knowledgeable about Children around Children as possible. And I would look for sort of a really good, comfortable gut feeling as you

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walked into the facility or the family daycare home. Do you personally feel comfortable? There's a good chance that your child will also feel comfortable um if they're attending there all the time? Well, thank you for joining us today, We're out of time. Um you've given us

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great information and now we know that facility is available. Thank you. Please join me next time. I'm dana D'Errico and this is Sonoma County in the nineties