New Jersey Assemblyman Avi Schnall (D-Lakewood) has introduced new legislation aimed at preventing the devastating tragedies that occur when parents accidentally leave their young children in vehicles, leading to severe injury or death from heatstroke.
The bill would require child care centers to notify parents or guardians if their child does not arrive as expected, a critical safeguard to help avoid these heartbreaking incidents.
The legislation mandates that all licensed child care centers in New Jersey establish a notification procedure as a condition for securing or renewing their operating license. Under this law, if a child does not arrive at the center and no prior notice has been given for the absence, the child care center must contact the parent or guardian to determine the reason for the child’s absence.
“This is about saving lives,” said Assemblyman Schnall. “We’ve seen too many tragic cases where a child is forgotten in the backseat of a car, especially during the busy morning routine. This legislation ensures that if a child doesn’t arrive at daycare, parents will be notified immediately. That phone call could be the difference between life and death.”
The bill empowers the Department of Children and Families (DCF) to enforce the law by requiring notification procedures as part of the licensing process for child care centers. It also grants the DCF the authority to deny, revoke, or refuse to renew the license of any center that fails to comply.
“Even one child’s life lost in this manner is too many. With this legislation, we are taking a proactive step to ensure that parents receive that critical reminder if something goes wrong during their day. It’s a simple measure, but one that could prevent an unspeakable tragedy,” Schnall added.
This is an urgent issue which needs to be addressed but this is not the way.
Taking something that is the parents responsibility and shifting that responsibility to the day cares is not right.
It’s a great system to help the parents with their responsibility of their child but to remove the responsibility from the parents and put it on the day care who is also trying to deal with the kids while now having to by law reach out to parents is not right.
Additionally it’s a great system which the day cares reach out but to make it mandatory and the responsibility of the day care is not fair to these hardworking workers working with these children.
And what happens if they don’t
get around to it in time because the overworked and underpaid teachers are busy figuring out the feeding, napping and diapering schedules of those who arrived already while soothing screaming kids?! Blame the teacher c”v?? Fire the teacher c”v??
I would like to hear a halachic analysis of this.
its doesn’t shift responsibility it doubles down on it!!
when r”l a child dies in a car the parents not only have to deal with the heart ace but also there is legal issues they have to deal with.
they should supply a iPad or a device by the door that a parent can tap their child’s name when they drop off their kid and if the child’s name is not tapped by a certain time it automatically generates a pre recorded message that has to be received (push one if you received this message) this way it really is still the parents doing their part
Daycare should be responsible to make sure the kids are not sure they should send a text message. Every single school in town takes her attendance and most of them sending an a text message if your kids out there within the first half hour of school school starts at 9 o’clock. They send a message by 9:30. should not be so difficult to have one staff member make sure that all the kids are there and there should be a attendance machine like most classrooms have. Attendance machine to take attendance for breakfast lunch and snack to get money they could do this too.
Most schools have it from advanced security, which is the county that does most schools and probably also daycare for all their security cameras, etc.
Assemblyman Paskesz introduces legislation mandating if the Candyman notices a child has not come for candy by the 4th Aliyah the Candyman is required to walk to the child’s home to make sure everything is OK.
This bill will require anyone who is a member of the CUNJ (Candyman Union of New Jersey) to maintain an accurate record of addresses for all the children & if a child isn’t in Shul by the 4th Aliyah to walk to the home to confirm all is well.
Candyman Nuch Schlepper is against this legislation. He explained, “By the 4th Aliyah I’m half lit & can barely walk straight much less find an address.”
Candyman Ois Varf supports this bill as long as there is an exception to be back in Shul in time for the Haftorah Kiddush.
Candyman Varf said, “Do you know how embarrassing it is to show up to Yeshiva without knowing all the juicy loshon hara spread at the Haftorah Kiddush?”
[A child left in the car is serious business. But considering the thousands upon thousands of times this doesn’t happen (which is why it’s such big news when it does) this seems like an overreaction putting more obligations on day care owners & possibly opening them up to criminal or civil trouble. Not being from NJ/NY I’m shocked by the attitude of “there’s never been an issue we couldn’t figure out how to regulate”. Why not require child alarms in all vehicles? 95% of the time the child is in the van they’re not being dropped off at Day care. It seems NJ loves to take the responsibility away the the person (the parent) & shift it to another party.]
Sorry, not correct analogy every single school in Lakewood takes attendance and send parents a text because they’re not there in the first half an hour. Why our day cares any different.
As the first comment on the top of the page gives a good idea of how parents login and tablets and if they don’t see a login within the first half an hour, then it should automatically send a text to parents
I have children in different schools in lakewood and I have no clue what you’re talking about.
Simple and smart. Thank you.
its not simple and not smart thank you
when is tuition coming down avi
None of the proposed solutions will resolve the actual cause. Every single case involved a change in schedule. Almost always not involving a school schedule. It’s the change in parents schedule that causes the issue. Since parents having to change their schedules can’t be regulated, this resolves nothing. This happens on non school days. For example during Bein Hazemanim. A father running errands forgets he took the baby to make things easier for his wife. Just n example as the time I almost left a kid in the car. My toddler was off from school. Both my wife and I had work. I was supposed to drop my toddler off enroute to work and didn’t remember him in the back sit until a block from work. What mechanism proposed would have prevented this? I don’t have a pocketbook. Should I have driven without my glasses? Maybe driven in my underwear? Sometimes it’s just the Malach Hamaves, and nothing anyone can do.
Perhaps ask this should best be addressed by the Poskim as a Takanah. This may be overreaching and have unexpected repercussions.
Hope the Bill includes covering the bill for such a system. These systems can be costly. The obligation should really be on the parents. The fact that it’s a good idea, doesn’t mean the day cares could afford the added expense. As it is, day care costs are crazy high, parents can’t afford for it to be put on them.
Shifting the responsibility to the day staff is not the answer and it certainly is not their responsibility. Being busy with morning routine is not an excuse for neglect.