How did The Hechinger Report Gain Information Contained in a Child Care Worker’s Personnel File for Publication?
Posted: February 11, 2016 Filed under: Administration for Children and Families, Allies for Quality Care, Business Ethics, Child Care Advisory Council, Child Care Development Fund, Child Care Mississippi, Clarion-Ledger, DECCD-MDHS, e-Childcare™, Hechinger Foundation, Kellogg Foundation, Mississippi Board of Health, Mississippi Building Blocks, Mississippi Health Department, Mississippi Legislature, Mississippi's Child Care Crisis, MS Department of Education, MS Department of Health, MS Department of Human Services, School Readiness Mississippi, SECAC Mississippi, Uncategorized | Tags: "Race to the Top", Administration for Children and Families, Allies for Quality Care, child care licensing Mississippi, child care Mississippi, DECCD, DECCD-MDHS, Early Childhood Education Mississippi, Hechinger Report, Kellogg Foundation, MDHS, Mississippi Child Care Quality Steps, Mississippi Child Care Resource and Referral, Mississippi Health Department, Mississippi State Early Childhood Institute, Mississippi's Child Care Crisis, SECAC Mississippi, The Mississippi Center for Education Innovation, Xerox Leave a commentHow did The Hechinger Report Gain Information Contained in a Child Care Worker's Personnel File for Publication?
Is this a preview of the touted (SB2274) Early Childhood Services Interagency Council “character” and does such conduct really validate increased funding for the Early Learning Collaborative?
Freedom of Information Act
The Freedom Of Information Act intends to hold government accountable through transparency and gives the public an opportunity to monitor the functioning of their government.
The Hechinger Report and The Clarion-Ledger requested complaint and inspection reports for every licensed child care facility in District V, which spans a large part of Mississippi, including Jackson, Vicksburg and Yazoo City.
The Mississippi State Department of Health said it would cost $40 an hour to pay someone to pull the records, a fee that was reduced to roughly $20 per hour after The Hechinger Report filed a complaint with the Mississippi Ethics Commission.
Relevant public interest under the FOIA is “the citizens’ right to be informed about what their government is up to.”
Steering “High Quality” (QRIS) is Against the Interest Congress Intended in FOIA
On December 1-4, 2016, on the Facebook page of The Hechinger Report, reporters wrote:
“We want to hear from parents about their experiences finding safe, high quality places to leave their children…” (Click here.)
“Wanted to be sure that everyone knows we’ve got an inspection report from every child care center in the Mississippi Department of Health’s District Five (Claiborne, Cophia, Hinds, Madison, Rankin, Simpson, Sharkey-Issaquena, Warren and Yazoo counties.) Curious about how your center fared? We’re happy to share! Let us know what centers you’re interested in.”
FOIA Exemption 6: It is not enough that the information might aid the requester in lobbying efforts. Hypothetical public benefits cannot outweigh significant invasion of privacy. U.S. Department of Justice
A request for more information as to what was being released to the public yielded the following response from The Hechinger Report:
“Nothing we have is confidential…We have copies of complaint reports that are marked substantiated or unsubstantiated but any reference of those complaints would say clearly if they were substantiated or unsubstantiated.”
Alleged Defamation
On January 31, 2016, The Hechinger Report and the Clarion-Ledger published “Mississippi child care in crisis: State’s weak oversight puts children in harm’s way”. It reveals investigations The Hechinger Report conducted at centers that may have been targeted based on the unsubstantiated complaints and identification of individuals disclosed and received in its FOIA request from the Mississippi State Department of Health.
In one case, although The Hechinger Report did not provide hospital records or lab results from the parent or anything that would hold up in a Court of Law verifying an infant had in fact been given juice or medicine that made him sick, it chastised the Mississippi State Department Health for insufficient investigation and/or for not substantiating that such an incident had indeed taken place.
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that such a statement on the part of The Hechinger Report may be defamatory.
The Scoop – “We Want Absolute Power!”
On February 1, 2016, The Hechinger Report teased the question, “Who should fix problems with Mississippi’s early childhood system?”
It went on to report, “The Department of Health has the most control — it’s the only agency that can open or close a center and impose fines — yet there are holes in its monitoring process, according to advocates and legislators.
That narrow approach limits how effectively the state can monitor centers, said Cathy Grace, co-director of the Graduate Center for the Study of Early Learning at the University of Mississippi.
Some lawmakers have suggested the Department of Education should take a larger role in regulating centers.”
On February 2, 2016, Hechinger tweeted: “A few legislators have prioritized child care in Mississippi including @Brice Wiggins.”
§ 25-61-11 Personnel Files Not Public Record
On February 7, 2016, The Hechinger Report and The Clarion-Ledger published “Turnover, low pay may undermine child care in state”. On the same day Hallmark premiered “Kitten Bowl III” in support of shelter and rescue adoption, The Hechinger Report revealed the work history portion of a personnel file as follows:
“On a Wednesday morning in June 2014, xxxxxxxx, director of xxxxxxx Center sat in her office as a parent accused a worker of grabbing her son’s neck. The worker had been hired five months earlier, with no experience in child care. Her background included 10 months as a vet assistant, two months as a sales associate at an art gallery and one month at an animal shelter where she “took care of the cats,” according to records from the Department of Health’s Division of Child Care Licensure.
The point was to demonstrate that the accused had no former experience as a caregiver, a violation of the Regulations, and The Hechinger Report could have just said that but then, that might not have been adequate to be highly offensive to a reasonable person.
Instead, it set work at the Humane Society/shelter apart in dramatic quotations as though this employment is unworthy and allegedly violated both the Privacy Act and Mississippi Code which prohibits disclosure and release of personnel records or any part of such record in the agency’s possession. (Click here.)
Child Care Small Business Discrimination
Limiting the Pool of Talent! Snubbing Most Stakeholders!
On February 9, 2016, Bill 2274, Education, was posted. The Bill seeks to establish full control of all financial resources and authority over all Programs for preschool aged children. It would eliminate the Governor’s State Early Childhood Advisory Council and with that, remove the following stakeholders from the early learning policy making table: child care providers from each Congressional District; Building Blocks, Excel by Five, The Center for Education Innovation, nSpark, Mississippi State Extension Service, and more.
Adversity is the rule for child care and working families when law gives some state actors the upper hand, so we wisely prefer and support a balance of power. Technology and the State Early Childhood Advisory Council make that possible.
So, we think we will keep our seats, and ask the Hechinger reporters to kindly have one.
The private child care industry is Mississippi’s workforce support system and we congratulate Governor Bryant on the creation of 2,500 new jobs in Clinton!
HECHINGER’S “CRISIS IN CHILD CARE” SMEAR CAMPAIGN IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY KELLOGG!
Posted: February 3, 2016 Filed under: Administration for Children and Families, Allies for Quality Care, Business Ethics, CCPP-approved Provider, Child Care Advisory Council, Child Care Development Fund, Child Care Licensing, Child Care Mississippi, Clarion-Ledger, DECCD-MDHS, Early Learning Guidelines (ELG), Hechinger Foundation, Kellogg Foundation, Mississippi Board of Health, Mississippi First, Mississippi Health Department, Mississippi Legislature, Mississippi's Child Care Crisis, MS Department of Education, MS Department of Health, MS Department of Human Services, Office of the Attorney General, QRS Mississippi, Quality Rating System, SECAC Mississippi, Uncategorized | Tags: Administration for Children and Families, Allies for Quality Care, child care licensing Mississippi, child care quality rating systems Mississippi, DECCD, DECCD-MDHS, Early Learning Guidelines (ELG), Hechinger Report, Kellogg Foundation, Mississippi CCDF State Plan, Mississippi Child Care Resource and Referral, Mississippi First, Mississippi Health Department, Mississippi State Early Childhood Institute, Mississippi's Child Care Crisis, Quality Rating System; DECCD-MDHS; CCDF Quality Improvement, SECAC Mississippi, The Mississippi Center for Education Innovation Leave a commentA child care press conference will be held on Monday, February 8, 2016, on the second floor of the Capitol at 10:00 AM.
HECHINGER’S “CRISIS IN CHILD CARE” SMEAR CAMPAIGN IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY KELLOGG!
The Hechinger Report knew the Mississippi Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights was investigating potential Disparate Impact in Mississippi’s child care quality rating system before publishing harmful, unsubstantiated child care complaints (that should not have been disclosed because Courts have ruled no public interest exists in unsubstantiated complaints) and expressed its disdain for Constitutional Due Process of Law in Sunday’s Clarion-Ledger – its partner.
Seems to me they may as well partner with the paparazzi and the National Inquirer!
Hechinger is funded by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation which is actively involved in the promotion and support of Mississippi’s Pre-K Collaborative and QRIS.
Up to now, it has seemed, particularly to self-employed child care providers, that the strategy (in Mississippi) of some Pre-K Collaborative supporters (including some media outlets, public policy groups and member organizations) may be to lift up their member programs (and gainful employment through associated grants) by disparaging self-employed child care providers (the majority of which are Black and/or women owned and operated Programs) through selective reporting, adverse policy, exclusion, and marginalization.
Perhaps the idea is to bully the citizenry and working parents, over time, into agreement that child care and time spent with us is not safe or where a child should be; only six hours of public Pre-K such that they would be funded to advise/provide/report can really meet a family’s work support and early learning needs.
And such strategy would be particularly necessary when Frank Porter Graham’s recent Evaluation of Mississippi’s very costly yet unavailing QRIS and measured child outcomes in the recent legislative review of the Pre-K Collaborative are scathing!
The Joint Legislative Committee on Performance Evaluation and Expenditure Review from PEER: The Mississippi Legislature’s Oversight Agency, is the only external Early Learning Collaborative evaluation available to legislators because:
- there is no child care regulatory oversight for Pre-K classrooms such as is required in other states;
- there is no QRIS classroom requirement such as is required for Pre-K classrooms in other states so Mississippi cannot compare Pre-K “quality”;
- the physical standards as governed by the Early Learning Guidelines are less stringent for existing Mississippi Pre-K classrooms than they are for child care classrooms and standards have recently been weakened for new construction through July 2017.
The report does not recommend increased funding or additional staff for Pre-K.
A child care press conference will be held on Monday, February 8, 2016, on the second floor of the Capitol at 10:00 AM.
This is your opportunity to unite as the small business child care industry and present the facts.
Stand up for your small business!
Come stand with us!
A message from Carol Burnet of MLICCI:
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