Church-Exempt Child Care Centers Need More Oversight

A piece of paper. For all practical purposes, nothing else is needed to open a child care center in Alabama. That is indefensible.

Declare an operation to be a church-related center and it becomes exempt from most state regulations. As the Advertiser’s Kym Klass reported, a statement on church letterhead effectively releases a child care center from these regulations because the state has no authority to look beyond that. “Anyone can open one,” said Calvin Moore, director of child care services at the Alabama Department of Human Resources. “If you say you’re a church, you’re a church.”