Families who need someone to watch their kids before or after school sometimes languish for years on the waitlist for School Age Child Care (SACC) in Fairfax County.
Beyond the Bell, a pilot program launched this fall by the county’s Department of Neighborhood and Community Services (NCS), is testing whether a new model for child care — one that is license-exempt and increases the maximum number of kids — can help solve that problem.
“Our guiding light was to reduce the wait list while maintaining a safe and supportive environment…but still being able to accommodate more children. So we were trying to meet both of those objectives,” NCS Division Director Chris Scales told county residents during a recent informational meeting held over Zoom. “So the solution that we came up with was the Beyond the Bell pilot program.”
The pilot program operates under a licensure-exempt child care model. In Virginia, the Department of Education (VDOE) sets standards and regulations, but child care programs operated by local governments are allowed to be exempt from that licensure.
In practice, that meant that the county could increase the ratio of staff to students to a maximum of 1:22 in the pilot program. The standard SACC model allows 1:18. It also meant that the county could ease some requirements related to the amount of experience needed from potential staff.
Between the county’s growing population and stricter office attendance policies, the SACC wait list has grown significantly, Scales said. At the same time, he added that it has always been difficult to retain a workforce that both meets the experience required for licensure and wants to work non-standard hours.
During the Oct. 22 meeting — which was primarily intended for residents who don’t currently attend a Beyond the Bell site — many people expressed concerns over how adding more kids would impact the quality and safety of the care they receive.
“SACC has been wonderful to our family, and we’ve gotten to know many providers,” said one resident. “They’ve been wonderful to my family because they’ve gotten to know my children. I’ve said recently, it’s starting to get more and more kids. It’s getting louder and louder. There’s more kids who have behavior concerns that the staff have to worry about.”
In response to a similar comment, Scales stressed that the county is “still going to abide by the safety standards” with Beyond the Bell.
“We’re still going to recruit staff that meets the qualifications. We’re still going to train staff,” he said. “We’re still going to keep protocols for field trips, protocols for how we check kids in, protocols for how we supervise kids, protocols for supervision. All those things will still be in place. What we’re trying to do is figure out a way to expand capacity at the same time.”
Another parent said they’re already worried about the amount of screen time kids get “on tablets and playing Nintendo switches and video games and watching TV, which we don’t love in a school environment in the first place.”
“With the increased number of kids, we’re concerned that staff will rely more and more on tablets, video games, things like that,” the parent said.
Scales offered to speak with the resident afterwards.
“That’s not something really … we should be doing now,” he said regarding staff relying on screens. “That’s not the expectation that we have for our program.”
Though the program operates at 20 elementary schools, Beyond the Bell is not a Fairfax County Public Schools program. Neighborhood and Community Services, which runs it, selected the sites based on the existing SACC wait list, Title I designations, percentages of students who receive free and reduced meals, and the county’s vulnerability index.
“As we looked at those, we identified those 20 schools,” Scales said. “We wanted to make sure that we had a good representation across the entire county, so we show up in every magisterial district, and we’re spread from one part of the county to the other.”
Those sites include: Annandale Terrace, Bailey’s, Braddock, Brookfield, Flint Hill, Hybla Valley, Lake Anne, Lorton Station, Mosaic, Mount Eagle, Mount Vernon Woods, Oak View, Orange Hunt, Pine Spring, Providence, Spring Hill, Timber Lane, Vienna, Westlawn, and Wolftrap.
The county will make a decision on the future of the program after obtaining metrics and feedback from families near the end of the 2025-2026 school year, Scales said. He emphasized that there is no pre-ordained decision; the county is open to all possible outcomes.
“It does not behoove anyone — us, the kids, families, anyone — to put something out there that doesn’t work,” Scales said.
