Aug 9, 2005 11:00 pm US/Eastern
Daycare Cameras
PHILADELPHIA (KYW) ―
Some parents have an extra set of eyes watching their children at daycare. CBS 3 Anchor Pat Ciarrocchi reports on daycares that have welcomed web cams.
While Rakia Reynolds works her daughter Skai plays at day care across town under a pretend tree and a real camera.
Rakia can keep an eye on her daughter on the web.
"I looked up and she was smiling, and she was laughing, she was right in the camera, like she knew I was logging on," said Reynolds.
"People will call us and say, you guys are the day care with the web cameras, right," said Jordan Weiss.
Jordan Weiss runs Busy Bees Learning Center in Philadelphia.
Ever since his day care center opened four years ago, it has had web cams. Parents say they love it.
"I was just watching her dance the other day, which was really cute," said mother Stephanie Sendek.
Lunchtime, nap time, it is all on the web.
"It's a cheap and easy way for parents to see what goes on during the day," said Weiss.
Frank Ryan runs ABCKam, one of several companies that provides web cams to day cares.
Parents get a user name and password and can only see rooms their children are in, like the infant room.
But not all day cares want what Ryan is selling.
Phil Schumacher oversees hundreds of day cares franchised as Goddard Schools and none of them use web cams.
"You can't control who might be looking at a child, tracking a child, what day they're coming into a school. It causes great concern for us because it's all surreptitious," said Schumacher.
But ABCKam says, its system is blanketed with several layers of security and centers know who logs in.
"It would be much easier for someone to just pull up into the parking lot outside a child care center and see what's going on in the playground than to hack into our system," said Ryan.
"We're in a new generation, you know," said Reynolds, adding, "I think it's, like, old school if you're not having something like this where you can log on and see what your child is doing."
Web cameras in day cares are still rare, there are only a few in the area.
(© MMV, CBS Broadcasting Inc., All Rights Reserved.)
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