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Discovery Montessori School in Copley appealing loss of its child care license

Akron Beacon Journal - 6/7/2021

The state of Ohio has revoked a Summit County Montessori school’s license to operate a day care. The school is appealing the decision in court.

Copley-Fairlawn Montessori School Inc., which is doing business as Discovery Montessori School at 707 Schocalog Road in Copley Township, filed the appeal Tuesday in the Summit County Court of Common Pleas.

The school, which opened a day care in 2012, is seeking to overturn a May 21 order by the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services. After conducting eight inspections from May 2016 through November 2019, the state agency revoked the school’s license based on numerous infractions.

Over the four years of inspections, the state documented 30 infractions, including:

Class sizes larger than allowed by state law; Unsupervised toddlers. Safety concerns with playground equipment. Medications and other “potentially hazardous” substances within reach of children, including a “pesticide” on the floor of the toddler room. Medicine with no prescriptions on file for the children taking them. And a table standing on end where it could have fallen onto playing children.

Many of the issues were not corrected after being discovered in earlier inspections, according to ODJFS. For example, the state requires one teacher per eight toddlers. But in 2019, during the seventh inspection in the four-year period, ODJFS staff observed four teachers watching two classes that totaled 55 children. In one of the two classrooms, the ratio was one teacher per 17 children, or more than double what the state requires and larger than the 1:14 ratio observed the prior year.

The school’s administrator, Lakshmi Mohan, did not return multiple phone calls seeking comment last week.

During a visit to the school Friday, office manager Kala Bagley confirmed that the school year ended Thursday. But she would not say whether the unlicensed daycare would continue to operate during the court appeal process.

Multiple attempts to reach ODJFS by phone and email were also not returned.

A child care license revocation is rare, according to state records and the testimony of the ODJFS worker who recommended pulling the school's license.

The state’s database of child care facilities lists 187 in Summit County. Discovery Montessori School is the only one in “enforcement” status, meaning ODJFS is actively working to strip the state-required license.

In her testimony before an administrative hearing officer, Licensing Supervisor Aimee Weekley said she’s seen “maybe a dozen” licenses revoked in her 16 years overseeing licensing at ODJFS’ Akron office.

The Montessori school is being representing by Columbus attorney Brian Garvine, who did not answer a message left with his office.

In his filing to appeal the license revocation, Garvine wrote that his client reduced non-compliance issues by 50% in the final inspection conducted in November 2019, which is the progress he said the state wanted to see.

The school did bring the eight infractions documented in May down to four by November.

In a transcript of the administrative license revocation hearing, Weekley said cutting the infractions in half was only part of what the school needed to demonstrate to keep the daycare open.

“That’s what we were looking for,” Weekley said, “but there needed to be no repetitives [sic] and, unfortunately, that was still there, those four moderate risk noncompliances.”

Attorney Garvine also questioned why the hearing officer did not include the final inspection in his report.

Reach Doug Livingston at dlivingston@thebeaconjournal.com or 330-996-3792.

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Discovery Montessori School in Copley appealing loss of its child care license

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