Osage School-Age Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., recently got top marks from the Council on Accreditation, and received expedited notice of the achievement after the COA on-site visit Jan. 8, 2024.
“(The accreditation) shows that we are meeting standards that are of the highest quality, from everything like our files for children, our files for staff, things that we are doing in the classroom, enrichment activities … It is super important because it allows everyone to know that we are accredited and we are meeting those standards at a high level,” said Bethany Roemer, Child and Youth Services facility director at Osage.
Accreditation by a national accrediting organization is required for Department of Defense school-age programs and child development centers, as noted by the U.S. Government Accountability Office. Accreditation for Osage SAC occurs every four years to ensure many standards of excellence are being met in the areas of administrative and management, human resources, client rights, training and supervision, administrative and service environments, and out-of-school time.
“All of these standards have sub-standards and multiple criteria to meet within each standard,” Roemer said. “We submitted an extensive self-study to COA prior to the visit, and then had on-site evidence ready for the endorser to view during the visit, as well as the site visit itself.”
In addition to providing after-school care as a school-age center for first through fifth grades, the Osage facility also functions as a Child Development Center for preschool and kindergarten. The CDC accreditation, which is conducted every five years, was completed in March 2023 by the National Association for the Education of Young Children, for which Osage CDC also received high marks with an overall 97 percent.
Roemer said the Osage SAC accreditation on-site visit was conducted just as an arctic blast hit the area, forcing the staff to be flexible as school was cancelled and child-care needs changed.
“The endorser came in, and it was really supposed to be like a day and a half where he’d come in the first day and watch our program, observe, go through my on-site evidence, and he already got all of the evidence that we had sent prior to the visit, and they go through that and then do on-site to make sure everything matches up,” Roemer said. “He came on the 8th, and we actually ended up closing early that day, so I had to meet with him a couple times throughout the bad weather, so we could make sure we got everything viewed properly and he got the chance to see everything he needed to see. We ended up having a non-school day on the 8th, so a snow day got the kids out of school — all here — instead of doing a before- and after-school program that we were going to show him, which is OK because that’s what CYS does, roll with it.”
Roemer said results of an accreditation are usually received in about 30 days, but the results of this accreditation arrived much sooner.
“When I looked at the calendar, I think it was like five business days from when (the endorser) left to when we got the letter back notifying us that we have been reaccredited, and that had been expedited just because they had no findings on any of the core standards.”
A detailed final report will follow, Roemer said, that will likely include some suggestions and highlight program strengths.
“(The endorser) did out-brief us, and he said our interactions were very positive and good, and that he could tell we were a good team,” Roemer said. “Those are things that I’m proud of because I think that connection with the families and our staff, that’s what makes us great.”
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