What Qualifications Do You Need to Be a Daycare Director in Nebraska?

Director qualifications are licensing rules, and in Nebraska they come from the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), Children's Services Licensing.

The qualifications sit in the state's child care center rules, 391 NAC 3 (Child Care Centers), which took effect February 20, 2013, became operative May 20, 2013, and was still the current version on the Nebraska Secretary of State's rules site when our research read it.

Family child care homes are licensed under separate chapters of the same title, so this page covers directors of licensed child care centers.

Nebraska's rule sets four qualification routes, and three of them run on education credentials.

The first is a bachelor's or associate degree in early childhood education, education or child development.

The second is a bachelor's degree with 6 relevant credit hours.

The third is a CDA — the Child Development Associate credential awarded by the Council for Professional Recognition.

The fourth runs on a high school diploma or GED paired with experience and training rather than a degree: 3,000 hours of experience plus 6 credit hours or 36 clock hours of training, or a 12-month plan to complete them.

On the degree routes themselves, the text our research transcribes names the degree field rather than a credit-hour total.

Experience is what unlocks the no-degree route: a director qualifying with a high school diploma or GED needs 3,000 hours of experience alongside 6 credit hours or 36 clock hours of training, or a 12-month plan to complete them.

The degree and CDA routes carry no experience figure in the rule text our research transcribes — the degree or the credential is what the rule names on those routes.

How qualifying experience is documented is not set out in the text we read, so a candidate assembling proof of hours should ask DHHS Children's Services Licensing what the department accepts.

No state-issued director credential appears in the rules our research read — qualification runs through the degree, credit, CDA and experience routes above.

The administration-focused requirement comes after licensure: directors complete Early Childhood Training Center child care management training within five years of provisional licensure.

The credential the rule names among those routes is the CDA, awarded by the Council for Professional Recognition, and it stands as a qualification route of its own.

When a Nebraska job posting asks for a director credential, what the licensing rule actually sets is one of these routes plus the management training clock, so ask the employer which route they expect a new director to hold.

A Nebraska director's own training rules run on several topic clocks.

Department-approved director orientation is due within 30 days of starting.

Early Childhood Training Center child care management training is due within five years of provisional licensure, and safety training — SIDS and safe sleep, shaken baby syndrome, abuse reporting — is due within three years and every five years after.

Early Learning Guidelines training starts with one domain within four years of provisional licensure, then one domain every year.

Center staff who provide direct care have their own clock — 12 clock hours of training a year, or 6 hours if they work 20 hours or less per week.

Our research did not establish whether that staff rule also covers a director who provides direct care, so ask DHHS Children's Services Licensing.

The center rules our research transcribed — 391 NAC 3 — set the director's own qualifications, and that text did not surface a separate assistant-director, designated person-in-charge or state assistant-director credential requirement.

Treat an assistant-director title as the center's own job title, and ask the employer which director route or which staff qualifications the role is expected to meet.

For what the current rule requires of the person left in charge when the director is off site, ask DHHS Children's Services Licensing.

Our research did not surface a Nebraska licensing rule that requires a center director to join a workforce registry.

The registry that does touch a director's program is the Nebraska Early Childhood Professional Record System (NECPRS), run by the State Department of Education: for a Nebraska program to be rated above Step One in Step Up to Quality, the program must report staff degrees, credentials and training to NECPRS.

That is a program reporting condition attached to quality rating, not a director licensing requirement in the rules we read.

The rules that carry Nebraska's director qualifications — 391 NAC 3 — took effect in February 2013, became operative in May 2013, and were still the current center rulebook on the Secretary of State's rules site when our research read them.

Those rules predate the federal CCDBG reauthorization, so federal-driven requirements, fingerprinting among them, may be imposed by statute or DHHS policy outside the rule text our research transcribed.

Confirm current background-check and training expectations with DHHS Children's Services Licensing before you rely on this page for a hiring or application decision.