Day-care centers with no violations pay attention to details

By Ashley Luthern

and Grace Wyler

news@vindy.com

Administrators and owners of day care centers that perform well on state inspections say keeping up with regulations is a daily task.

Amy Logan teaches a class of 3- and 4-year-old children for six hours at Imagine That! Day Care and Preschool in Columbiana, and then spends another three or four hours in her office doing paperwork.

“Paperwork is a big thing that state inspectors check,” said Logan, who became the owner of Imagine That! in 2007. She started working as a teacher there in 1999.

Imagine That! has had no violations in three state inspections, which Logan credits to following everything “by the book.”

“I encourage parents to look up the inspections,” she said.

Kara Continenza of St. Mark’s Building Blocks Learning Center in Boardman said having no violations in four inspections, like her center, is a realistic goal.

“It comes down to being organized. [Inspectors] are not trying to trick you,” Continenza said.

She said changes to the state licensing inspections used to come through the mail, but are now online and sent through e-mail.

Read this, the second part of a three-day series on child-care centers in the Mahoning Valley, in its entirety Monday in The Vindicator and on Vindy.com.