During an Aug. 26 press conference focused mainly on financial support for families seeking childcare, the Pa. Dept. of Human Services (DHS) announced new regulations for the newly emerging “learning pods.” As many school districts across the state-including Allentown SD-have kept their doors closed, and others-such as Bethlehem Area SD-have limited in-person attendance to two days per week, families are scrambling to find supervision for school-aged children, with some creating groups of families that take turns managing their children’s online learning activities.

Regulations questioned

After a Sept. 8 report on new Pa. regulations for pods by NBC10 Philadelphia revealed surprise and confusion among families that had already set up pods, DHS held a press conference to clarify the rules for these family-based groups, as well as for non-licensed daycares.

DHS Secretary Teresa Miller voiced sympathy with parents, observing that “the COVID crisis […] continues to be an especially heavy burden on Pennsylvania’s working families with children.” She continued, “As this crisis drags on, the lines between school, home, and work are getting blurrier and blurrier […] Many families have found themselves searching for childcare options for their school-age children during times when they would normally be in school and safely supervised by their teachers.”

Acknowledging that the state has created “new rules, new routines, and new expectations,” Miller stated, “We have two goals: Keeping children safe and healthy, and creating flexibilities for working families during this unprecedented time of challenge, stress, and anxiety.”

However, some parents and groups are objecting to the new regulations as burdensome, in that they amount to compulsory state registration and oversight of a home-based activity involving a small group of friends. Additionally, the mandatory fingerprinting and background checks cost $52, and finding a local background check facility operating during the pandemic is a challenge.

Lenore Skenazy, nationally known “free-range parenting” advocate and founder of parenting resource organization Let Grow, criticized the new regulations as overzealous.

“Parents and kids are having a hard enough time this year trying to figure out school, child care, work or lack of work, disease-avoidance, and possibly hunger,” Skenazy said. “To act as if every home has to be basically prepared for a meteor hit, and every parent is a predator till proven otherwise, is paranoia pounded into law. If lawmakers are looking for something truly helpful to do, they can deliver food to struggling families, or get some more mobile libraries on the road.”

Kerry McDonald, senior economic fellow at the Foundation for Economic Education and Adjunct Scholar at the Cato Institute, concurs. She believes that “these pod regulations […] create enormous obstacles for parents during this challenging time,” noting that “in most states that are doing this, the pod regulations apply to families with children currently enrolled in a public or private school.” She points to the doubled incidence of homeschooling for the 2020–2021 school year (10 percent of American families, compared with just 5 percent two years ago, according to an August Gallup poll) as evidence that parents are increasingly frustrated with state-level requirements for children enrolled in public and private schools.

Seven new requirements

What exactly do parents in a pod have to do? Defining a pod as “a group of no more than 12 school-aged children brought together for the purposes of sharing parental oversight,” Miller laid out seven requirements for groups of six to 12 children during her Sept. 9 press call:

1. Develop a COVID health and safety plan aligned with Pa. Dept. of Health (DoH) and CDC guidelines.

2. Develop a plan to address the response, evacuation, and family notification in the event of an emergency.

3. Find out what the rules are in your local municipality, as local zoning ordinances could prohibit any kind of childcare taking place in residences.

4. Ensure that every space where your child’s pod gathers has a functional fire detection system on all levels of the residence.

5. Ensure compliance with the Pa. Child Protective Services law. Anyone working with or supervising children must undergo a background check (www.KeepKidsSafe.PA.gov).

6. Make sure every adult in your pod who supervises children understands that they are a mandated reporter who is required to report suspected child abuse.

7.Notify DHS of your plan to care for school age children during the 2020-2021 school year by completing an attestation form, which is available on the DHS website. Programs will be subject to DHS monitoring, and must provide access to DHS personnel who arrive at the service location and present a Commonwealth-issued ID badge.

Pods of five or fewer unrelated children should view the above requirements as “best practices,” Miller said. A complete list of the regulations, including the attestation form, is available online (https://www.dhs.pa.gov/coronavirus/Documents/Non-Licensed_SACC%20and%20Pod%20Final%20082620.pdf).

The mandatory fingerprinting and background checking may pose particular challenges for families, as a former local provider (IDEMIA of Exton, Pa.) no longer offers this service. Although some UPS Stores formerly offered this service, the franchises on Catasauqua Road and on Lehigh Street in Allentown do not currently perform it, and the telephone number for the franchise on Leithsville Road in Hellertown is no longer in service.

Both Secretary Miller and Deputy Secretary Tracy Campanini, who heads the Office of Child Development and Early Learning (OCDEL), positioned the regulations as helpful, rather than intrusive. One point both administrators emphasized was that being registered with the state will protect pods if an overzealous neighbor reports them and alleges that they are operating an unlicensed daycare. Miller and Campanini also asserted that the new rules protect children by ensuring that their friends’ parents comply with DoH rules regarding the novel coronavirus.

The flip side is that the new DHS regulations apply to the activities of children and their friends while at each other’s houses, not under the auspices of a group (like a sports team) that is open to all community members, and not as part of a remunerated business scheme. As such, the septet of regulations is unprecedented.

A question of enforceability

“We have no intention or desire to cite anyone who doesn’t meet every expectation,” Miller said. “However, in order to meet our obligation to protect children, we do maintain the ability to use enforcement action if necessary. Most likely, if this becomes necessary, it would take the same type of enforcement action that we take fairly frequently against unlicensed childcare operators, which always begins with a ‘cease and desist’ letter.”

Campanini clarified that.

“We’re talking about children who are enrolled in kindergarten and older-not preschool children,” she said, raising an inconsistency in the new rules and their ostensible in protecting children from being in an unsafe environment.

The DHS regulations also seem to be the thin edge of the wedge for DoH investigations in homes. In response to a question from NewsTalk 103.7 FM about the necessity of pod registration, Campanini explained, “We want to understand where there are groups of children gathering, to be able to take that into consideration when thinking about COVID-19.” She responded similarly to a reporter from KYW NewsRadio who asked whether DHS would track down unregistered pods.

“We are operating under a pandemic, and there are basic health and safety activities that we feel very strongly about,” she said.

Asked by another member of the media how DHS plans to enforce that COVID-19 safety regulations are put in place in the pods, Campanini said that after the “cease and desist” letter, the department would “deal with it on a case by case basis, if there was continued failure to comply.”

After addressing questions about increased availability to ChildCareWorks grants, Miller made a final point about pods.

“Our goal here is twofold: We’ve gotta keep kids safe and healthy,” she said. “That’s number one. [… N]o parent wants to leave their child in a situation that’s not safe. Education is important, but safety is number one. These steps that we’re asking parents and families to take, are really about keeping kids safe.”