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Oregon failed to tell parents it shut down a day care. So kids kept going.

By Brad Schmidt, The Oregonian
Published: December 27, 2017, 9:33am

PORTLAND — Parents shopping online for child care aren’t the only people Oregon regulators leave out of the information loop. Sometimes, state officials fail to notify existing customers when problems arise at a facility.

That’s what happened this year when the Office of Child Care tried to shut down an east Portland day care called Sugar Pine.

Regulators intervened after the owner and licensed child care provider, Sarah Herbelin, admitted using illegal drugs, state records show.

Regulators wrote that Herbelin told them she never used opiates around children or when her in-home day care was open. She also told regulators she completed a treatment program, state records say. She declined to comment for this story.

State officials considered an emergency license suspension. Parents would have been notified if that happened, said Lisa Morawski, an Office of Child Care spokeswoman.

But regulators worried a suspension wouldn’t hold up legally. They opted instead not to renew the facility’s license when it expired in January. Morawski said the state does not inform parents of non-renewals.

So, when Sugar Pine ignored the state and stayed open, Erin Sanders kept taking her two kids to the in-home day care this year, unaware of any problems.

Sanders didn’t learn until August that the facility had been operating without a license for seven months, when she called the state to file a complaint for other concerns she had about Sugar Pine.

“I just started crying,” she said, “because I let my kids be in someone’s care who wasn’t legally able to care for them.”

Miriam Calderon, who oversees child care regulation as director of Oregon’s Early Learning Division, could not explain why Oregon tells parents when safety concerns prompt a suspension but not when safety concerns prompt a nonrenewal.

“I get your question,” she told The Oregonian/OregonLive, “and I get your point.”

Sanders said regulators should have notified parents.

“I feel that they did less than the minimum to keep children safe,” Sanders said.

“How would they feel if this happened to their children?” she added. “They could have done so much more. And they didn’t.”

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