Charging Late Fees Is a Deterrent
LESLIE SPANIER, Regional vice president of Bright Horizons Child Care Management, which operates 14 day care centers in Southern California
Lots of child care centers do close on the early side. It is justifiable because child care centers are expensive to run. Many open early in the morning, maybe 6 a.m., and stay open 12 hours. It’s also highly labor intensive. For infants, it’s one caregiver to every four babies. When you add salary and benefits and the number of hours they work, it becomes very expensive. Because child care workers are relatively low-paid employees, we have a near 50% turnover rate. A lot of people can’t survive on this kind of salary. Parents have to realize that these individuals are dedicated, loving, trained caregivers whom their child spends a large part of their day with. They should be compensated better, but unfortunately that is not how it is.
There are fees charged for late pickups and they vary greatly. Usually the fee is by the minute or in five-minute increments, depending on the center. It is not meant to be a fast money-maker but more as a deterrent. We would be thrilled if we never had to charge a late fee. But if a pickup and closing hour is decided and agreed upon, it’s only fair to expect the parent to meet the child at that time or face the late charges.
Our company partners with businesses and corporations, so we make every effort to adjust our hours to mirror the ones of the people we are serving. We come to an agreement on the hours depending on the needs of the parents. If a business tells us that the majority of its employees leave work at a given time, we accommodate those hours.
Once a center’s hours are determined, we can’t just change them. There is a procedure of filing with a division of the Department of Social Services called Community Care Licensing. Basically we’re in violation of that if we keep children after hours on a regular basis. That is not to say there are not going to be circumstances where the parent is held up at work or sitting in traffic. These things happen every day. We are prepared to deal with that if there are special arrangements made beforehand. A center that is well prepared will know how to deal with this. It is the center’s responsibility to make the parents have a backup plan mapped out when they first register the child.
