http://www.latimes.com/editions/orange/20000910/t000085298.html
Keeping a Remote Eye on Day-Care
Kids
Parents can monitor live video
of kids
via Webcams, thanks to a Newport
firm.
More centers are likely to join.
By MATTHEW EBNET, Times Staff
Writer
For Judi McDill, the video
window in
the corner of her computer screen
is the
only connection with her son
during the
day. On the Web, she watches him eat
lunch, stand on chairs with that
coltish
wiggle in his knees, fuss with
his shirt
buttons. Sometimes, when the
5-year-old
notices the camera in his
day-care center,
he waves.
All day she watches.
Chase, 5, was attending
Southcoast
Early Childhood Learning Center
in Costa
Mesa when a man crashed his Cadillac
into the playground last year,
killing two
children. So when McDill looked
for a
new school, she was sold on Newport
Harbor Montessori Center because
of its
Webcam service. The Webcam offers
"some peace to [my] soul" about
her son's
well-being.
"I know it couldn't prevent
something
bad happening again, but it gives me
reassurance about his safety," said
McDill, 35, who lives in Orange.
"The
teachers know they are being
watched at
any time. The biggest thing for
me is that I
can just see him. I can see him.
And I can
touch him in some way."
A year-old Newport Beach
company
offers the Webcam service, which has
been picked up by five Orange County
child-care centers and is being
considered
by five others. The company
provides the
schools with $800 computers, the
cameras
and high-speed Internet
connections for
free, in exchange for full
participation
from parents in the Webcam program,
called GuardianCam. The parents
pay $10
to $20 a month for the service.
All they
need is a computer at work to
watch. The
company also is installing
equipment in
five schools in the San Diego
area and is
"talking to" 42 preschools in the
San
Francisco area.
Jennifer Lovely of Newport
Beach
said she got the idea for the
company
when she found it hard to leave
her own
son Joseph, 4, in a home day-care
center.
With help from some technologically
savvy friends, Lovely created the
company and began approaching
preschools. She now employs 10
people--and watches Joseph via her
computer as he attends Newport
Harbor
Montessori.
Lovely wasn't the first to
think of the
idea. The first online video
system was
launched in early 1997 at a day-care
center in Connecticut. Also in 1997,
Cathy's Kids Club in Tustin
installed
video cameras in classrooms to
broadcast
still pictures on the Internet
for parents to
monitor their children. That
system is still
in place, an employee there said.
Still, concerns have been
raised about
such systems, by teachers and
sociologists
who question just how much parents
should be overseeing their
children during
the school day. And some
conservative
commentators have huffed that if
parents
want to watch their children so
badly, they
should stay at home with them.
But Lovely says she has not
heard any
such complaints.
"This is just a sign that
people are
saying, 'Yes, I have to work,'
but they are
finding other ways to connect
with their
families," she said. "This is one
way of
doing it that works. . . . I know
it is
one-way communication, but it is
something."
Lovely said some schools were
apprehensive, especially about the
requirement that all parents
participate in
the program; that adds cost to
already
expensive day-care fees. But other
schools were eager to join in,
wanting
another opportunity to allay
concerns
about safety in child-care centers,
particularly after the Costa Mesa
crash.
"There's this fear out
there," said
Jamee Backus, director of Newport
Harbor Montessori Center, which
cares
for about 160 children. "I feel
like this
abolishes all that fear. Parents
can log on.
Then they can ask their children
about
their day. The parents know what
to ask.
Like, 'Hey, I saw you were
working on a
science project. . . .' And the
children feel
more connected with their
parents. You
can feel it in them. You can see
it when
they wave into the cameras. It is
darling."
Sometimes the video can be
frustrating,
however; the quality of the
images can be
uneven and jerky. The video produces
seven frames per second, compared
with
about 30 for television. The
video offers
detail and color, but no sound.
But even if technology
doesn't allow
for perfect, real-time video yet,
participating parents and schools
say the
idea offers a sense of security.
"For the parent it shows we
have
nothing to hide," Backus said,
"and they
don't have to come and check on
their
child."
Backus said about two dozen
parents
enrolled in the school
specifically for the
cameras, and about a third of
them were
single parents looking for some
way to
stay in touch with their children.
One 31-year-old mother sends
her
child to a preschool in the
county that uses
the cameras. She did not want her
name
used because of concerns about her
4-year-old daughter's safety.
She said the cameras were
the biggest
selling point for her school.
"It just makes sense," she
said.
"There's a lot to worry about. I
have
[video] on all day. All day.
Without it, I
can ask her how her day was and
she just
says, 'OK' or 'Fine.' But this
way I can ask
her specifically about what she's
done. I
also can call her on it when she
puts her
feet on the table. She's not
supposed to put
those feet on the table."