Should Child Care Programs Have Cameras? Childcare Experts Discuss

In this episode of Early Childhood Chats, host Andy Roszak talks with Kevin Wright from Watch Me Grow about a topic that generates a lot of opinions and not enough informed conversation: cameras in childcare settings. Watch Me Grow is a video platform built exclusively for the early childhood education industry, offering commercial-grade camera integration, secure parent viewing, long-term footage retention for compliance, and a growing suite of AI-powered features designed to support proactive program management rather than reactive crisis response. Kevin walks through his own path into early childhood technology, including his time at a childcare management platform before joining Watch Me Grow during the merger with PB&J TV. The conversation covers how parent viewing actually works in practice, including the data showing that average parent viewing time is less than a minute per day or week, how centers are using cameras as coaching and professional development tools rather than surveillance, the legal and insurance value of reliable footage retention, and how programs are offsetting costs by offering camera access as a value-added service to families. Kevin also previews Watch Me Grow’s active supervision AI feature, which detects when an adult is not present in a classroom and flags the event for director review. Andy and Kevin discuss the shift in perception from cameras as punitive “big brother” tools to proactive instruments for quality improvement, staff support, and family trust. Learn more about Watch Me Grow: https://watchmegrow.com/ Episode Timestamps 0:00 Introduction: cameras at the intersection of early childhood and technology 1:00 Kevin Wright’s background and how he ended up at Watch Me Grow 2:30 The PB&J TV and Watch Me Grow merger 3:30 Why Watch Me Grow is built exclusively for early childhood education 4:30 What Watch Me Grow actually is: the platform explained 6:30 Parent viewing: how it works and how centers customize access 8:30 The data on parent viewing: enrollment boosts, retention, and average viewing time under one minute 10:30 Cameras as a professional development and coaching tool 13:00 The hockey film analogy: watching to build best practices, not to catch mistakes 14:30 Myths and misconceptions about cameras in childcare 16:30 The story of a director who could not produce footage when it mattered 18:00 Camera placement: classrooms, hallways, playgrounds, parking lots, and exteriors 20:00 Offsetting costs: charging a technology fee for parent viewing access 22:00 The legal value of reliable footage: discovery, insurance claims, and the jury argument 24:00 The shift from reactive to proactive: using video to identify trends before incidents escalate 26:00 The iPad story: how video revealed a staffing need, not a teacher failure 28:00 Active supervision AI: detecting when an adult is not present in a classroom 31:00 What’s next: ratio tracking, smart observations, and emotional learning features 33:00 Security benefits: after-hours surveillance, vandalism, vehicle incidents 35:00 The vehicle-into-building story from Canada and why footage matters for insurance 37:00 How to reach Watch Me Grow and the discovery conversation process 39:00 Closing thoughts on transparency and the future of video in early childhood ---------------------------- Early Childhood Chats is hosted by Andrew Roszak - JD, MPA, EMT-P Executive Director at the Institute for Childhood Preparedness. The Institute for Childhood Preparedness is proud to use its decades of experience to offer comprehensive and expert disaster and emergency preparedness trainings live in-person, via webinar, and on-demand online. // Visit: https://www.childhoodpreparedness.org/ to find out more // Schedule your training today https://www.childhoodpreparedness.org... FOLLOW US   / childhoodpreparedness     / childprepared     / childprepared     / institute-for-childhood-preparedness   © Institute for Childhood Preparedness 2025 all rights reserved