COVID-19 and Summer Camps: Our Public Warning to the Governor
Meow Meow Foundation submitted the following letter to Governor Newsom’s office, to the first partner and to officials in all 58 counties. One of the governor’s senior policy advisors has already responded. We list all incoming responses here.
Also, new CDC guidelines (click link and read pages 11 and 15 which pertain to reopening camps) may allow camps to reopen by June.
April 25, 2020
Governor Newsom:
California camps that serve millions of children and employ thousands of young counselors could very well open this summer. While we understand how challenging these times are and how camps are recreational child care outlets for working parents, opening camps during COVID can pose considerable if not lethal health consequences.
Here are just a handful of these day and resident (overnight) camps that still expect to open at this point:
Tom Sawyer Camp, Pasadena
Crazzy’s Wasewagan Camp, Angelus Oaks
Pali Adventures, Running Springs
Steve And Kate’s Camp, multiple locations
Unlike traditional day care facilities, California day camps are not licensed. This means that 58 counties do not enforce critical programming oversight, including background checks, emergency action plans and proper health and safety inspections, other than those inspections directly related to facilities (which vary widely by county). Resident camps are afforded oblique oversight, at best.
Our 6-year-old daughter and only child drowned at one of these recreational child care facilities just 10 short months ago. Her death, of course, was wholly preventable. No two people understand more about California’s injudicious regulatory environment for camps than we do.
It is why we established a foundation and have since spent countless hours neck-deep in meetings with your office, state and federal legislators, boards of supervisors, city councils, senior state and county health officials and other high-level gatekeepers.
How can camps expect to effectively socially distance children? How will we know if a COVID outbreak occurs at or is spawned by a camp? And how will anyone monitor camps since they are not regulated?
We met with Los Angeles County Health Director Dr. Barbara Ferrer and her team in February. The health deputy from County Supervisor Kathryn Barger’s office also attended. We explained that hundreds of camps are not inspected or licensed. We also mentioned that L.A. County—the most populous in the country—fails to even require a standard business license for camps.
Soon thereafter, we met with Girls Scouts of Los Angeles whose officials told us their camp operators could not and would not invest in medically qualified on-site health supervisors. Since this is the case, how can we ever expect the majority of smaller camp operations to act any differently?
Our foundation introduced SB 955, The Roxie Rules Act (Portantino) in February so that millions of children and young adults are no longer in harm’s way at California camps. Our bill is more important than ever. Thousands of camps are not regulated. And COVID is the ideal breeding ground for community spread.
The current colossal gap in the system cannot prevent these camps from opening, thereby potentially jeopardizing millions of children, counselors, staffers and others with whom they will come in contact. These citizens from densely populated cities will travel to camps in rustic, remote areas which do not have adequate resources to manage outbreaks.
Many camp counselors also come by way of the J-1 visa program, which enables international students to work under a cultural exchange model. This arrangement not only allows camps to avoid paying wages, it also introduces many unknowns. Based upon the current statute, these counselors do not have to be subjected to background checks or medical reviews at summer day camps.
By no means is our foundation trying to be merely alarmist. We too wish children and families had healthy recreational options, including camps. Our constituents and our fellow citizens simply expect us to be out in front of this critical issue.
We implore you and the CDC to include day and resident camps as non-essential businesses in all future virus-related directives until detailed social guidelines are established. We also encourage you to meet with us to discuss ways by which camps can implement more effective health measures.
Thanks to 2012 American Camp Association lobby efforts, primarily guided by lobbyist Catherine Barankin, the ACA passed legislation that establishes them as California’s proxy for health and safety oversight of “organized camps” (overnight camps) — a rather shocking conflict-of-interest that affect millions of children.
The ACA and its lobbyists have a long history of blocking critical camp health and safety legislation. We have also revealed their inadequate accreditation processes that require camps to meet only 19 percent of established standards. Accreditation fees represent a large share of ACA revenue. The ACA only inspects its camps every 3-5 years, by its own admission.
Such lean accreditation requirements make it easier for camps to part with their money in order to gain a seal of approval. Parents rely on this ACA seal of approval when making camp decisions. We believe these parents deserve to be better informed, better protected.
We were deeply disappointed to learn that the ACA recently opposed our foundation’s bill for reasons consistent with its efforts to prioritize camp interests over child protections. We hope to persuade the organization that both children and camps win when everyone operates in safer environs.
Our foundation is engaging media outlets about this issue and would appreciate your comments in order to better inform our answers. California’s children deserve nothing less than all of our very best.
Sincerely,
Doug Forbes and Elena Matyas