Yesterday, in a joint session of the Senate’s committee on Children and Families and Workforce Development and the Assembly’s committee on Children and Families, AB176/SB141 passed unanimously. The bill, re-named the Jalen Knox-Perkins bill after the 4-month-old child who recently died after being left alone for several hours inside a child care transportation van, will go to the full Senate and Assembly next week.
The committees heard touching testimony from Perkins’ grandfather Keith Williams, who asked for swift passage of the bill. Others who testified in favor of AB176/SB141 included Henry Wilde and Jill Chase from the Department of Children and Families, Mary Reid of Reid’s Child Care Academy, Christine Holmes from Penfield Children’s Center, Darryl Winston from the Milwaukee Police Department, and Anna Benton from the City of Milwaukee Health Department.
At present, DCF licensing rules prohibit children from being left unattended in a child care vehicle. This bill would mandate that a child safety alarm be placed in the rear of certain child care vehicles. This would require the driver to physically move to the back, while checking to make sure all children have exited, to disarm the device. Under this bill a child care vehicle is defined as one that can seat 6 or more passengers in addition to the driver, is either owned or leased by a child care provider, and is used to bring children to and from child care. If passed, current providers would have a 3 month grace period to comply with the new law. You can read the full text of the bill here.
Similar legislation has been passed in Tennessee and Arkansas.
WECA 
The minivan my family owns seats 6 besides the driver… it seems like this definition of “child care vehicle” will cover every thing except “regular” cars.
I wonder how much these alarms will cost and am glad my family child care program doesn’t provide transportation!
The alarms are another safety precaution which hopefully with prevent another child from being left on van or bus. Unfortunately, there is still a human being in charge and a child could still be left on the vehicle. It has happened in a program which has already installed the alarms. The child was found in a short period of time because the classroom staff followed the tracking procedure; the child was signed in as being picked up but didn’t make it to the classroom.
In all the incidents that have been reported my question has always been where was the receiving staff member was there no attendance taking on the bus and then in the classroom.