What Oklahoma daycare inspectors cite

Oklahoma Human Services, Child Care Services, licenses daycare centers and home daycares and inspects them. Licensing staff visit often and without notice, and they also investigate complaints and return for follow-up visits.

Each finding in Oklahoma's records describes what the inspector saw, in the state's own words. Oklahoma lists visits with no findings too, so a listing shows the visits where nothing was cited as well as the ones where something was.

Staff training and qualifications are the biggest group: 30.8% of the rules Oklahoma inspectors cited, and 44% of the daycares visited had at least one. These citations are usually about training hours, CPR and first aid, or the paperwork that proves them.

Safety and hazards come next (12.5% of citations, at 32% of daycares), then records and paperwork (11.8%, at 27%) and the building and play areas (10.6%, at 20%). Supervision and ratio rules were 7.5% of citations and reached 16% of the daycares visited; a supervision finding deserves a closer look than a paperwork one.

Because training rules are what Oklahoma cites most, ask how many staff hold current CPR and first aid training, and what training a new teacher gets before working alone with children.

Then ask how many adults are in your child's room at nap time and pick-up, where cleaning products are kept, and whether you can see the playground. Ask the director about anything on the daycare's state record that you want explained.

Each Oklahoma listing on DaycarePal shows the state's visits for that daycare, with the inspector's description of each finding. Oklahoma's records carry no risk level, so read what was found: a missing training record is not the same as a child left without an adult.

The records do not show when a finding was corrected, so ask the director what changed. Look at the dates too: a recent supervision finding says more than an old paperwork one, and the same problem found at visit after visit says more than a single finding.