When you are a parent who needs to send your child to daycare, there is a lot of unknowns. You spend a lot of time researching different places, but the information you want is not always available. For the most part, you are relying upon word of mouth, and you never know what the standards different parents have for a daycare center.

No matter what the case, parents everywhere have a problem with teachers not only bringing drugs to daycares, but them being so careless with them that they get into the hands of children. According to an ABC report that is exactly what happened at The Learning Experience in Whippany, New Jersey.

Aside from the obvious, what is really scary about this is the information was difficult to ascertain. When Googling “Learning Experience Whippany” this ABC report was not on the first page of results. What we did see was a Yelp review giving unspecified parent complaints.

On that first page, the results did pull up the State of New Jersey Department of Children and Families Inspection Reports on the facility. The incident where drugs were brought to the school and fell into the hands of children there are not mentioned . . . AT ALL!

What was there was a September 2018 Report which indicated there was a failure to conduct fire drills and even worse the center was not undergoing proper background checks and training. However, despite this, the State did determine the center was “free of imminent hazards/risk of harm.” Seeing what happened only months later, this report and that determination was laughable.

Now, this is far from the only day care center to have an issue. Last July, there was an infant death at the KinderCare in Whippany. When you check the New Jersey State records of the facility, THERE IS NO MENTION OF THIS EVENT!

How in the world is drugs getting into the hands of children and baby deaths not inspected or reported upon by the relevant state agencies? This is a complete failure by the State of New Jersey. It is not giving parents the information they need to make sure they are putting children in safe environments, and as we see, it is putting children in harm’s way.

This is a complete abdication of duty by the State of New Jersey. It’s bad enough they don’t shut down these facilities, but to not even investigate or report on these actions is a complete dereliction of duty. Fortunately for me, I don’t live or work in close enough proximity to either center for either place to be a consideration for my children. Like everyone else, I had to find this out by word of mouth.

That’s not remotely acceptable, and the State of New Jersey has some explaining to do. I’d imagine this is the same situation in other states as well.