A new daycare director spends the first 90 days earning the job: audit the licensing and staff files before anything else, sit down with every staff member one-on-one, learn where the money comes from and where it goes, and read the weekly schedule against enrollment.
Change little in the first month, write down everything you find, and confirm every licensing question with your state child care licensing agency.
What should you do in your first week as director?
The job has a defined shape.
BLS lists a preschool or childcare center director's duties as supervising teachers and childcare workers, hiring and training staff, providing professional development, setting and communicating policies, developing educational programs, meeting with parents and staff about progress, preparing budgets and keeping facilities clean according to state regulations.
Week one is not when you do any of that well — it is when you find out where each of those duties already stands.
Start with the question that decides everything else: whose playbook are you running on?
At independently owned centers, directors follow the owner's guidelines — sometimes the director is the owner.
At chains and franchises, the director must meet the parent organization's standards.
Head Start directors follow U.S. Department of Health and Human Services requirements.
Get this straight before changing anything, because the answer determines which decisions are actually yours to make.
Then meet the people.
Sit down with each staff member in the first week — ask what their room or role needs, what has been working, and what broke and was never fixed.
You are collecting a to-do list and a map of trust at the same time, and you will use both for the rest of the first year.
Calendar honestly while you do it.
BLS notes that most preschool and childcare center directors work full time, some more than 40 hours a week, and that they are on site while the center is open — so put the file audit, the one-on-ones and the budget reading on the calendar as appointments rather than intentions.
If you are still weighing the role itself, our childcare director overview covers the duties, settings and pay behind the title.
Week one is for finding, not fixing
Which licensing and staff files to audit first
Open the license file first: the operating license itself, the capacity it authorizes, the most recent inspection reports and any corrective actions still open.
Timing matters because inspections do not wait for you to settle in.
The federal CCDF framework, administered by ACF, requires states to inspect licensed child care providers before licensure and at least once a year unannounced for compliance with health, safety and fire standards (45 CFR 98.42(b)(2)(i)).
States add their own rhythms — in Texas, Child Care Regulation inspects a newly licensed operation unannounced at least every six months in its first year, then at least annually, checking all minimum standards every two years and core health and safety standards annually (CCR Handbook 4131).
Your state child care licensing agency sets the schedule that applies to your building.
Your own file is on the audit list too.
Texas inspectors must meet a licensed center's designated director at least once a year during an unannounced inspection to check the director's qualifications.
Whatever your state checks and however it checks it, a new director is better served finding their own credential and training records during week one than during an inspection — and your licensing agency is the authority on what your file must contain.
Staff files come next, and the net is wider than the classrooms.
Under the CCDF background-check rules, a "child care staff member" includes anyone a child care provider employs for compensation, contract staff included — so office staff, cooks and drivers in licensed centers are covered, not only teachers (45 CFR 98.43).
The audit therefore walks the whole payroll: a clearance on file for every person, training records current, and the credential paperwork each role depends on actually there.
Which records each role needs is your state agency's list to give.
Head Start programs carry a parallel federal set.
Personnel policies must be approved by both the governing body and the policy council (45 CFR 1302.90(a)), and staff must complete at least 15 clock hours of professional development each year (45 CFR 1302.92(b)(1)) — both Office of Head Start rules.
Those standards belong to Head Start; a private center's list comes from its state licensing agency, and neither set transfers to the other setting.
For what happens when the inspector is actually at the door, our guide to preparing for licensing visits covers the walkthrough, the visit itself and what follows a citation.
The agency owns the list
How to lead former peers if promoted from teacher
Promoted from the classroom, you now supervise people who were peers last month, and the ground rules change before anyone has adjusted.
BLS counts supervising teachers and childcare workers, plus hiring and training staff, among a director's core duties — the part of the job you saw least from a classroom position.
Your credibility now rests on two things your former peers can verify: fair decisions, and the unglamorous parts of the job actually getting done.
BLS names the qualities the role draws on: business, communication, interpersonal, leadership and organizational skills.
In a first quarter built on former relationships, the interpersonal and communication skills do the heavy lifting — and the business skills are the ones you have to build on purpose, because they are the budget and enrollment work in the next section.
Set a rhythm instead of making a speech.
A short one-on-one with each staff member on a repeating calendar slot does more than any all-staff meeting, and reflective supervision's own framework points the same way: ZERO TO THREE names reflection, collaboration and regularity as the three building blocks of reflective supervision.
Regularity is the one a new director controls from day one.
One route people ask about is the director-in-training track at a large chain.
Our research did not turn up how chains structure those director-in-training programs or their bonus arrangements — the sources we read simply do not describe them — so if you are in a director-in-training childcare track, treat your employer's own program outline as the guide and ask your supervisor what success looks like at each stage.
What to learn about budget and enrollment in month one
Preparing budgets is on BLS's director duty list, and month one is for learning the one you inherited, not rewriting it.
Sit with the owner or bookkeeper and read it line by line: what each revenue line actually is, which expense lines move, who approves spending and on what authority.
You are mapping the machine before touching it.
Enrollment is where the money starts.
Walk the roster against the license: authorized capacity per room, children enrolled in each, the waitlist, and the state of the tour pipeline.
Where the roster is thin, you will feel it in the budget; where it is full, you will feel it in the schedule.
Learn the funding streams too.
If the center participates in CACFP, the USDA food program is part of the budget picture — reimbursement rates are set annually by USDA and were not part of our research, so the center's own CACFP paperwork is the place for current numbers.
Subsidy agreements and, at a franchise, the fee structure the parent organization charges belong to the same month-one read.
Finally, read the weekly schedule against enrollment, room by room and hour by hour — it is where staffing, the budget and your state's staffing rules meet.
BLS notes that in large centers, directors and assistant directors may stagger their schedules so someone is always on site.
Whatever your size, our staff scheduling guide for operators covers staff scheduling in depth.
First 90-day checklist
Ninety days is long enough to know the center and short enough to stay disciplined about it.
Work the list in order — files before people, people before money — and keep a running note of what you found and what you changed.
That note becomes your first-year plan.
- Read the license file end to end: the license, the capacity it authorizes, the last inspection reports and any open corrective actions.
- Find your own file: your credential, your training records and whatever else your state's director rules require — keep it as current as any staff file.
- Open every staff file on the payroll — classrooms, kitchen, office, drivers — and list anything missing or expiring.
- Sit down one-on-one with every staff member: ask what works, what is broken and what they would change first.
- Walk every classroom and the playground, and watch arrival, lunch and pickup — the day's pressure points.
- Read the budget with the owner or bookkeeper: each revenue line, the expense lines that move, and who approves spending.
- Walk the roster: authorized capacity per room against children enrolled, the waitlist and the tour pipeline.
- Read the weekly schedule against enrollment, and put a repeating one-on-one with each staff member on the calendar.
None of this asks for a single change in week one.
It asks that by the end of the quarter you know exactly what you inherited — the state of every file, every person, every dollar and every hour on the schedule — so the changes you do make are yours to defend.
Career and employer information, not licensing or legal advice. Licensing standards, staff-file requirements and training hours are set and administered by your state child care licensing agency — confirm every requirement there before you act.