Update from the daycare violations site dad: 48 states, 214,000 facilities, 1.3 million inspection records
Some of you might remember a post I made a while back about DaycareAlert, a free site I built to look up daycare inspection and violation records. A lot of people used it and sent feedback, so this is the follow up I have been wanting to write for a long time.
First, the part I couldn’t say until now.
Something happened to my son Everett at his daycare in North Dallas. It was the worst day of my life. There was a serious safety violation and he was physically hurt along with another child. Afterwards I found out the facility had a history of violations. That information was technically public, but it was buried on a state website where no normal parent would ever find it. I felt completely blindsided/responsible. If I could have seen that record in five minutes, I would have picked a different daycare. There was a lawsuit, and it finally wrapped up, which is why I can talk about it now.
Building this site at night/weekends after my day job was honestly how I dealt with feeling like I should have known. Took me about 9 months.
When I first posted here, the site only covered Texas. Now I’ve added around 48 states + DC. That’s roughly 214,000 licensed daycares facilities and more than 1.3 million inspection/violation records in the US. Every state publishes this stuff differently, some in clean downloads, some most in clunky portals or scanned PDFs, so it took forever.
One thing I want to be honest about. A state with more recorded violations usually just inspects more often and publishes more. It does not mean its daycares are worse. I tried to build the site so that difference is obvious instead of hidden.
The site is free for parents and always will be. No paywall, no ads, no selling your info. That was the whole point of building it.
If you are picking childcare right now or curious about your kid’s current daycare, it’s daycarealert.com. If something looks broken or confusing, tell me. Half the improvements since my last post came from comments here.
Thanks to everyone who encouraged me the first time. It kept me going.