MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2010


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D.C. day-care licensing criticized Certification process


JOHN KELLY’S WASHINGTON


Even a procrastinator can have his dream house — at least till he wakes up


don’t you? She’s the magical person who comes in the night and fixes those niggling problems in your house that you have somehow managed to ignore for so long.


I


She grouts your tub, obviously, but she does so much more. In my dream, she fixed the bathroom sink. Months ago, the little plastic ball just inside the drain that blocks the water when you pull up and down on the faucet’s silver knob just sort of eroded away. I bought a new one at the hardware store, but rather than being a one-for-one swap it had all sorts of fussy plastic adaptors to modify it to the right size. With the stopper removed, the drain was a gaping hole — a gaping hole through which I managed to accidentally drop first one of the adaptors and then another. It was as if the hole now had its own gravitational field and was sucking in everything around it. It all happened so quickly — gulp! gulp! — that I stood before the sink dumbfounded, like a gambler who had just lost his life savings when the roulette ball landed on black instead of red. Were the little adaptors now in the U-bend? Could I get them out? Would I even want them now? I did what so many Mr. Fix-Its do: gathered my tools, turned out the light and walked


dreamed the other night that I had a visit from the Fairy Groutmother. You know her,


away. I brush my teeth very carefully


in that bathroom now. The Fairy Groutmother then went into our living room, where she fixed a bit of the ceiling that’s a little rippled. There’s a leak somewhere upstairs, the source of which we haven’t been able to definitively locate. It only leaks sometimes, during showers of a certain duration, for example, or when the shower head is at a particular angle. Naturally, if it leaked all the time, we’d fix it, but since it’s occasional it’s very easy to ignore.


So, too, is the paint in the dining room that is puckered in one spot. It looks as if someone has glued three or four Pringles to the wall. They are strangely alluring. You want to pull at them and pop one in your mouth. But if you did that, the paint would come away and you’d be left with exposed plaster. I suppose that to do the job right would require removing all the loose and peeling paint, sanding down the edges, preparing the subsurface, matching the paint, applying it, feathering the edges. . . . That sounds like an awful lot of work to me. But not to the Fairy Groutmother. With a wave of her hand, she fixed it instantly. Then she descended the basement stairs, replaced the worn carpet — well, the worn carpet undermatting; I don’t know why the previous owner didn’t put in actual carpet (then


again, why haven’t we?) — rewired the scary outlet and went through the garage to the back landing, where a nasty drain is set into the concrete slab of an exterior stairwell. Like our living room ceiling,


this drain is just fine most of the time — 363 days of the year, in fact. But every now and then there is a thunderstorm so intense that the drain is overwhelmed and water backs up into the garage. It’s at that point that I always wish I’d snaked it out. But it’s also at that point that the drain is at its most unattractive: fetid, swampy, choleric. All I can think to myself is, “I’m not sticking my hand down there.” The Fairy Groutmother had no


hesitation, however. Zing! It was cleared.


She came back upstairs and stood next to the bed, for that is where I was, my wife slumbering unawares beside me. The Fairy Groutmother was younger than I expected. She was sheathed in radiant white samite that clung to her shapely curves. In one hand she held a tape measure, in the other, a Phillips-head screwdriver. She leaned close to say something, her breath hot on my ear. “Is there anything else I can do for you?” she whispered. “Yes,” I said. “There’s a broken blind in the study. I’ve been meaning to fix it, but, well, you know. . . .”


kellyj@washpost.com


would-be providers say By Justin Moyer


Rasheeda Wilson has seven children living in her home in Southeast Washington. She’s got her own kids — Rashed, 16, Wade, 14, and Atyra, 12. Then she has her sister’s kids — Diamond, 5, Miracle, 4, Heaven, 3, and Angel, 2 — hers to care for because their mother, Wilson says, is addicted to drugs. Add five dogs and a cat and that’s 13 living creatures on Brothers Place SE that depend on Wilson — or, as she puts it, “a lot of heartbeats.”


Still, Wilson is ready for more.


For many months, she’s wanted to open an in-home day care. The main obstacle, she says, is the D.C. government.


Wilson is driven by her desire


to be at home for her children. Good parenting aside, day care is a potentially lucrative career. Ac- cording to the National Associa- tion of Child Care Resource & Re- ferral Agencies, the District ranks behind only Massachusetts when it comes to the cost of child care. D.C. parents pay an average of $917 a month — more than $11,000 a year — to have other people watch their kids. But child care is a tough busi- ness that’s tough to get into. And the District isn’t making it much easier, according to women going through a city licensing process that they describe as slow and unwieldy. “Are we locking any children in


NIKKI KAHN/THE WASHINGTON POST


Barbara Skinner consoles Patricia Turner Walters, Ronald W. Walters’s widow, during the memorial for Walters. He directed the African American Leadership Institute at the University of Maryland.


Walters recalled as modest ‘overachiever’ walters from B1 movement. Sharpton said in an interview


that Walters resisted any tempta- tion to commercialize his exper- tise. Walters never appeared on political cable TV shows that sometimes devolve into shout- fests, Sharpton said. “He kept it serious,” Sharpton said. “He wrote for history. He was understated, but an over- achiever. He won’t be easily re- placed.”


Among the speakers at the me- morial were Vernon Jordan, who served as a close adviser to Presi-


dent Bill Clinton, and Hazel O’Le- ary, energy secretary during the second Clinton administration and now president of Fisk Uni- versity in Nashville, where Wal- ters received his undergraduate degree. Joyce A. Ladner, former inter- im president at Howard, told the crowd that Walters’s wife, Patri- cia Turner Walters, typed and ed- ited his work and became an in- tegral part of her husband’s liter- ary accomplishments.


She was “not the woman be- hind him, but the woman beside him,” Ladner said. Some of Walters’s ideas, which


in the late 1970s and early 1980s seemed radical to some, have be- come part of mainstream politi- cal thinking. Walters champi- oned universal health care and proposed a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian issue dec- ades before those ideas gained currency in mainstream political discussions. Walters’s funeral is scheduled


for Monday at Shiloh Baptist Church, 1500 Ninth Street NW. The public viewing is at 10 a.m., and the service is to begin at 11, with Jackson delivering the eulo- gy.


castanedar@washpost.com


Leesburg man charged with murder of his wife A Leesburg man has been


charged with first-degree murder in the death of his wife, according to the Loudoun County Sheriff ’s Office.


Sheriff ’s deputies responded to


a reported injury from a fall at a residence on Lime Kiln Road in Leesburg shortly before 8:30 p.m.


Saturday, authorities said. When they arrived at the home, they discovered Catherine Ann Combs-Lafleur, 59, who had in- juries consistent with an assault, according to police. She died at the scene, police said. After an investigation by the Loudoun Sheriff ’s Criminal In-


closets?” joked licensing special- ist Jessica Parker at a child-care licensing orientation held at city offices on North Capitol Street. “Are we withholding food?” The audience of about 50 wom- en laughed, but the road ahead was difficult. Anyone who reg- ularly takes care of an unrelated child at home and wants to get paid for it needs a license, and the District’s Office of the State Su- perintendent of Education over- sees a multi-agency licensing process as unwieldy as its name. The orientation — which in- cludes training on how to accom- modate the disabled, a visit from a fire inspector and a discussion of lead safety with a Health De- partment sanitarian — is the first step in a months-long process few applicants will have the mon- ey, time or wherewithal to com- plete. Child-care entrepreneurs must follow the Health Department’s “Title 29 DCMR Chapter 3 Re- placement New Child Develop- ment Facility Regulations,” an 86- page document that does not shrink from specificity. Appli- cants must supply prospective meal plans, pass a criminal back- ground check and get certified in CPR. The manual delineates the first-aid supplies every day care needs (“One [1] roll of one-half [1/2”] non-allergenic adhesive tape”).


Finding a path through the bu-


reaucratic thicket is not easy, the agency in charge of licensing says. The agency has moved twice in the past year. “Our Web site is


is very unwieldy,


awful,” says Chad Colby, a spokes- man for the superintendent’s of- fice. “I’m not sure if it makes sense or is easy to find.” Blaming bureaucratic delays and money troubles caused by those delays, most applicants drop out. Only three of more than 50 people present at an April 15 orientation will join the ranks of about 150 in-home day-care pro- viders up and running in the city. Wilson and Kristin Coble are among the women who faced those long odds. In February, Wilson quit her


$47,500-a-year job as director of a transitional housing program when carting seven children to school, day care and doctors’ ap- pointments become overwhelm- ing. If she gets certified, she’ll get slots for six children — her four foster children plus two more. If she hires an assistant, she can watch a dozen children for about $100 a child a day. Wilson’s home not far from Bolling Air Force Base in Con- gress Heights sports an ample yard that abuts a park. But Health Department regulations require a day care’s outdoor play area to be fenced-in. So, even though she knew her day care wouldn’t bring in any money un- til at least fall, Wilson dropped


“I’ve followed every stage, but I’m going broke.”


— Rasheeda Wilson, who hopes to open an in-home day-care center.


$3,500 on a fence in August. Al- though the fence separated the back yard from the woods, an in- spector told Wilson that it wasn’t adequate because it didn’t sep- arate the front yard from the back yard. The solution: more fence and more money. “I have everything I need on


my side,” Wilson said. “I’ve fol- lowed every stage, but I’m going broke.” She estimates that her day care could make more than $60,000 annually. But for now, she’s not making anything. No stranger to early-childhood


education, Coble and her hus- band moved from New York to Washington so he could take a job as a lawyer for the D.C. Public Defender Service. Coble taught at a day-care center for homeless children, and later worked inves- tigating child abuse. She’s also had Montessori training. About a year before her daugh-


ter Maya was born, Coble and her husband bought a house in Pet- worth. Soon after, the house next door went into foreclosure and, though Coble says “my husband and I live on the edge with our fi- nances,” the couple bought the house and hatched a plan to open a day care called Little Lotus in their old home next door. The idea was that Coble would make money caring for other children as well as her own. The setup seemed perfect. In the weeks af- ter the orientation, she detailed plans for a day care that would serve organic fruits and veggies before sessions of baby yoga. “I could have it done within a


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month,” Coble said in April. Cut to the last Friday in August. Coble stands in her would-be day care surrounded by unpainted drywall and dust. “We’ve got to get this going,” she said. “We’re on the brink of bankruptcy.” The summer has not gone smoothly. Coble had contractor problems as she sought to meet the District’s standards with $17,000 in renovations to her house. To open a slot at Little Lotus


that’s worth about $385 a week from a paying client, Maya’s in the care of a Brazilian au pair for about $340 a week, meaning that an unemployed prospective child-care provider on a tight budget is paying someone else for child care while she waits to be approved to provide child care to other people.


Coble worries that the city might not license her for an in- home day care that’s not tech- nically in her home, even if it is next door. (She’s set up a bed- room with a double bed and alarm clock on the day care’s sec- ond floor in case inspectors raise this question.) Coble says un- returned calls and vague answers to questions about how long li- censure can take are difficult for a would-be small business. The agency says that only about 10 percent of those who seek certification to run an in- home day care get to the finish line. To Wilson, that’s proof that something is amiss. “They’re leaving us out there,” she said. moyerj@washpost.com


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vestigations Division, the victim’s husband, Steven H. Combs-La- fleur, 61, was arrested and charged. Sheriff spokesman Kraig Trox- ell said he was unaware of any prior reports of domestic vio- lence at the residence.


— Caitlin Gibson


Bulk of suit over World Bank protesters’ arrest is dismissed by Spencer Hsu


A federal judge Sunday tossed out the bulk of the last outstand- ing lawsuit filed in response to the controversial mass arrest of World Bank protesters in 2002 by D.C. police, ruling that four plain- tiffs lacked standing to ask for government reforms beyond clearing their records. U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan said the four George


Washington University journal- ists and observers for the Nation- al Lawyers Guild could not legally seek broader changes on the grounds that they might be ar- rested in the future. D.C. police arrested almost 400 people without warning Sept. 27, 2002, leaving many hogtied and in detention for more than 24 hours. In a series of settlements, police leaders have apologized, agreed to pay millions, and prom- ised to increase officer-training


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and record-retention policies. Critics say that such moves are already required under existing law and that no city official has been punished for the events. The judge’s ruling allows a probe into the disappearance of police logs and dispatch tapes to go forward. “We remain committed to tak- ing the case to trial and holding these individuals responsible,” said plaintiffs’ attorney Jonathan Turley.


hsus@washpost.com


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