Child Care Facilities in Kentucky Reopen With New COVID-19 Regulations

Child care facilities in Kentucky are reopening across the state with new regulations in place to protect against COVID-19. Regulations regarding class size, health and safety screening, cleaning and disinfecting, social distancing, and more have required many facilities to make significant changes before reopening. If child care facilities in your state have not reopened yet, Kentucky’s regulations could give you an idea of what it might look like once they do. Let’s take a look at one of the changes child care facilities in Kentucky are implementing - smaller group sizes.

Smaller Group Sizes = A Need For More Classrooms

The new regulations require that facilities have groups of 10 or fewer children in each room at all times. For many child care programs this has meant creating extra rooms using temporary walls to divide larger spaces, which Kentucky child care program reopening requirements allow, with some guidelines. To be compliant, temporary walls or partitions:

• Must be at least six feet tall.
• Must not be made up of furniture arranged in the middle of the space (such as shelves dividing the room in half).
• Must be stable (children should not be able to pull the wall down on themselves). Drapes or curtains of any kind are not acceptable.
• Must allow 35 square feet per child once the room is divided.

In addition, the new traffic pattern created by the addition of temporary walls still needs to follow the guidelines for opening centers during a medical state of emergency. Newly divided classrooms will be allowed to share a bathroom, assuming proper cleaning guidelines are in place.

Versare’s Room Dividing Solutions

Here at Versare we manufacture many different partitions that would fit the bill for Kentucky’s new regulations for child care centers, but the following are our top 4 recommendations:

• Polycarbonate StraightWall Sliding Portable Partitionsare made of a lightweight, waterproof, shock-resistant and translucent polycarbonate panel core with a durable aluminum frame. These partitions are asy to clean and available in 9 colors.
• The Room Divider 360is our most popular partition, featuring our patented 360° rotating hinges and available with polycarbonate panels or noise-dampening acoustical fabric panels. Fabric panels can be custom-printed with any pattern or design you like.
• The Premium SoundSorb Room Divider 360takes our original Room Divider 360 to the next level with the utmost in sound absorption. With an NRC rating of 0.80, it is acoustically superior to any other portable room divider on the market.
• The DivideWrite Mobile Whiteboard Partition is a divider and white board in one! It is made up of a magnetic, double-sided dry erase board mounted on top of one of our 2" thick acoustical panels, allowing it to double as a privacy partition.

All partitions are portable, sturdy yet lightweight, and easy to set up, take down, and store. Follow our easy cleaning instructions to keep your partitions clean, safe, and looking great.

Versare has the room dividers you need to help maintain a safe, healthy environment in your child care facility. Shop our online store here or give us a call at 800-830-0210.