About half of day care centers in Maine already meet the higher standards recently proposed by the Department of Human Services, but the difficulty of finding good day care combined with parents’ limited ability to pay more should cause the state to proceed slowly with its proposal.

At three public hearings around the state in the last couple of weeks, fortunately, DHS seems to have gotten this message.

The reforms are broad: Day care rules in Maine add up to more than 60 pages, and the state has planned changes on all of them. There are modifications to the rules for toilet training, car-seat use, breast-milk storage, lighting and space minimums and cleanliness. Training for staff is increased and reporting requirements made more specific. Attitude is evolving, as well: The words “management” and “discipline” in the rules would be changed to “guidance.” (Also, a typographical error has been corrected from “battle” to “bottle” feeding, although the former may occasionally be the more accurate.) But the rules that caused protest at the hearings were specific: How many students per staff member at child care centers and how many children total per center.

Child care centers, for the purposes of the regulations, have more than 12 children; small child care facilities have 12 or fewer children. The ratios in the smaller groups are unchanged under this proposal. In the larger centers, the ratios change for children age 4 to kindergartners. Instead of a 1:10 ratio, the proposal calls for 1:9. The number of children in a center also would change for that age group, going from a total of 30 to 18, and it changes for babies from 6 weeks to age 1 year, from a total of 12 to eight.

One of the reasons for the proposed changes comes from the number and nature of complaints against day care businesses. In many cases, says DHS spokesman Newell Augur, the complaints are prompted by a lack of supervision, and lowering the ratio presumably will improve the level of oversight.

This seemingly simple idea, however, raises all sorts of difficult questions about what day care ought to do and how it is supposed to get the resources to do it. These are questions of long-standing and come in many guises – from appropriate teaching, based on a growing understanding of brain development, to appropriate compensation for day care employees, based on a growing appreciation of the important work they do. There are no such large leaps in the DHS proposal; nor can there be as long as the primary source of funding day care is the parental paycheck.

DHS officials, instead, already are saying they are willing to modify their proposal to meet the concerns expressed at the hearings. Grandfathering current businesses was one option offered; raising the totals per center to something between the current and the proposed level has been suggested; compromising on the ratios is a third possibility. Maine ranks 44th nationally in its restrictions on group size, according to DHS. The new proposals would push it to 30th. It ranks in the middle nationally on child-staff ratios; the reform would put it among the top 17 states.

Like every other state, Maine needs to improve its day care businesses to meet the growing reliance on them. But it can’t do that if it makes them too expensive to operate or to enroll in. That will just result in more small uncertified day care homes. DHS says plainly that it is willing to take the reforms as slowly as is affordable. Day care operators should make sure they do.