Howard Cottage (Howard College Child Development Center)

Licensed Center in Big Spring, Texas. License #506810, issued February 16, 2001.

Address

1001 Birdwell Ln, Big Spring, TX 79720

Phone

(432) 264-5185

Licensed capacity

75 children

Licensed for

Infant, Toddler, Pre-Kindergarten, School

Hours

07:00 AM-05:30 PM

Days

Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri

Child care subsidies

Accepted

Programs listed with the state: Meals Provided, After School Care, Snacks Provided, Transportation to/from School, Field Trips.

Openings

This program has not told us about its openings. We only publish what a program confirms itself, so there is nothing here yet. Ring them to ask.

Texas Rising Star

Texas Rising Star 4-star of a possible 4

A quality rating the state awards after an on-site assessment. Four stars is the highest.

In effect since February 1, 2024. From the state's provider report of April 27, 2026.

Where this is

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The pin is where the US Census geocoder placed this address. About one in eight is interpolated along a street rather than resolved to a building, so treat it as the right block rather than the right doorway. How we source this.

What inspectors checked

Texas HHSC records how many individual standards it evaluated in each area of the rules, and how many it found violated. Across 22 areas it checked 3,220 standards at Howard Cottage (Howard College Child Development Center) between September 16, 2022 and June 2, 2026 and recorded 2 violations. Those correspond to the citations listed above that were recorded from 2021 onward; anything older than that is in the citation list but not in these counts.

The 22 areas, one by one

Area of the rules	Visits	Standards checked	Violated
Scope, administration, and communication	3	357	0
Record keeping	3	327	0
Personnel	3	436	0
Ratios and group sizes	2	108	0
Activities	2	72	0
Infants	2	180	0
Toddlers	2	44	0
Pre-kindergarten	2	38	0
School-age	2	40	0
Discipline	2	40	0
Naptime	3	36	0
Field trips	3	33	0
Get well care	3	81	0
Nighttime care	2	26	0
Nutrition and food care	3	134	0
Health practices	3	338	0
Safety practices	3	220	0
Physical facilities	3	224	0
Outdoor safety	2	192	0
Pools	2	54	0
Fire safety	2	135	0
Transportation	2	98	0

The table adds up to 3,213 of those standards. The remaining 7, including 2 of the violations, were recorded under the state's own catch-all heading, “Individual Standards Evaluated”, which names no area. They are reported here rather than folded into an area above, because the state did not say which area they belong to and we are not going to decide for it.

A high number of standards checked is not a compliment and a low one is not a criticism: how many apply depends on a program's size, its ages served and what the inspector was there to look at. We publish the two counts the state published and do not turn them into a score. This data begins in 2021, which is later than the inspection history above it.

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We ask for nothing but the address, and we send a confirmation first. Your list is never shown to this program, never sold, and every message has a link to stop. An inspection is routine: programs are visited on a schedule and after a complaint, and a visit is not a finding.

State inspection record

HHSC records 13 visits to this operation since October 2017, most recently on June 2, 2026, and 2 citations.

2 of those visits began with Howard Cottage (Howard College Child Development Center) reporting something to the state itself rather than HHSC finding it. We publish that because it is part of the record and the state records it separately, not because it is good or bad: a program with none may have had nothing to report. 3,674 of the 12,933 programs listed here have at least one.

Every citation below records a correction.

Citations

Showing all 2. Indented text is the inspector's own, reproduced verbatim.

1. Medium May 28, 2025 Correction verified June 24, 2025

   746.307(c): Parental Notification of Less Serious Injuries

   This standard was evaluated and found to be out of compliance. The operation staff did not notify the parent or authorized pick-up person, at pick up time, that their child fell hitting their head and complained of wrist pain while in care at the operation.

2. High September 3, 2024 Correction verified September 24, 2024

   746.1205(a)(4): Supervision ensures each child?s safety, well-being, including physical proximity and auditory or visual awareness of each child?s on going activity

   This standard was evaluated and found to be out of compliance. Two children walked out of the operation unnoticed and remained unsupervised outdoors for over two minutes.

Do you have a child enrolled here?

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About this record

Every figure on this page comes from the Texas HHSC Child Care Regulation open data published at data.texas.gov, reproduced as the state recorded it. We do not grade, score or rank programs. A citation is a finding by a state inspector on a given day; it is not a judgment about a program today, and the correction status beside each one is part of the record. This page reflects data retrieved on November 8, 2026. Full methodology.

Operate this program? Write to corrections@childcaretx.com and we will publish your response beside any record here.