Every two years, known as a biennium, child care professionals (administrators, lead teachers, assistant teachers, family child care) employed at Step Up To Quality (SUTQ) star-rated programs are required to complete 20 hours of Ohio Approved training.
The current biennium began on July 1, 2019 and will end on June 30, 2021. Please note: The number of required training hours has not changed due to the pandemic.
Failure to meet the deadline will result in loss of your program’s Step Up To Quality rating and contract to provide care to children receiving the Publicly Funded Child Care subsidy. What are the requirements?
Requirement: SUTQ Online Courses
There are two courses REQUIRED for ALL professionals working in star-rated programs. These two courses count toward the 20 hours of training requirement. You can register for the two courses online and free of charge through the Ohio Professional Registry.
The required courses are:
- Ohio’s Approach to Quality: This two-hour course delves into the basics of the SUTQ system and what it means for classroom staff and administrators. It allows participants to better understand the purpose behind Step Up To Quality, Ohio’s quality rating improvement system, and how each of their roles affect the quality outcome.
- Ohio’s Overview of Child Development: This three-hour course briefly explores the basic concepts in Child Development and how that knowledge is linked to providing quality care for children.
- Professionals who have completed a post-secondary level course in child development in the past six years, with a grade of C or higher, will be exempt from completing this course.
- An official transcript will need to be verified through the OPR before the professional’s deadline to complete the trainings. If the professional’s transcript has already been verified through OPR, the professional may submit a request for the child development coursework to be reviewed and verified for exemption.
Requirement: 20 Hours of OA Training
You must have 20 hours of Ohio Approved training. Need hours? Visit 4cforchildren.org/training.
How do you check your number of hours that you have left to earn? How do you know if you have completed the two required courses for all professionals? You can find the answers to these questions and much more by downloading this fact sheet from OCCRRA. Make sure you are up-to-date!
To receive these updates via email, sign up for our Pathways email newsletter.