GaPDS — the Georgia Professional Development System — is Georgia's workforce registry and professional development system for early care and education professionals.
Run by DECAL (Bright from the Start), it holds each professional's training hours, credentials and employment history, and it handles registration for approved training.
Georgia's center licensing rule does not by itself require membership, but the state's Quality Rated program requires every instructional and administrative staff member to be registered.
Here is how it works.
What is GaPDS?
GaPDS stands for the Georgia Professional Development System.
It is the state's workforce registry for early care and education professionals, run by DECAL — Bright from the Start, the Georgia Department of Early Care and Learning.
A GaPDS profile holds your training hours, credentials and employment history in one record, and the system includes both the professional registry and training registration for approved trainings.
It replaced Georgia's earlier PDR.
GaPDS is also where part of Georgia's training infrastructure runs: through it you can search for approved trainings and register for DECAL trainings, and if you train others, it is where you apply to become an Approved Trainer, advertise your trainings, manage rosters and renew your trainer designation.
The concept is bigger than one state: GaPDS is Georgia's version of the workforce registries our national guide covers.
Georgia's own version of the building blocks is what this page tracks — a training record, career levels, and membership rules decided by Georgia's rules rather than federal ones.
Who has to register in GaPDS?
The federal floor does not mandate it.
Under the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) rules at 45 CFR 98.44, each state must describe a training and professional development framework that addresses workforce information — but the federal rule does not require individual staff to join a registry.
Georgia's licensing rule is permissive too.
Georgia child care learning centers are licensed by DECAL under the Rules and Regulations for Child Care Learning Centers (Chapter 591-1-1), and that chapter lets evidence of orientation and training be documented and maintained in each staff member's personnel file and/or Georgia's workforce registry — GaPDS.
The rule does not by itself require GaPDS membership.
The mandate arrives with Quality Rated, Georgia's QRIS, which awards one, two or three stars.
Its program manual requires all instructional and administrative staff to be registered with GaPDS, and portfolio points in Standard 1 — "Director and Teacher Qualifications and GaPDS Verification" — depend on staff holding an active GaPDS career level.
The one registration mandate our research verified for Georgia runs through Quality Rated participation, not through the license itself.
What Georgia's licensing rules do require of center staff is its own topic: see our Georgia teacher requirements guide.
Participation and rules change
How to create a GaPDS profile
GaPDS lives at gapds.decal.ga.gov, on DECAL's own domain — the same address holds the registry and the GaPDS login once you have a profile.
A profile is your entry in the professional registry: the record that accumulates your training hours, credentials and employment history.
Once you are in, the system doubles as your training portal.
You can search for approved trainings and register for DECAL trainings directly in GaPDS, and GaPDS is where your training hours are held.
One honest caveat: the overview pages our research read confirm what GaPDS holds and what you can do inside it, but they do not walk through the current sign-up steps — which documents DECAL asks you to upload, whether a fee applies, or how long activation takes.
Create your account on the site itself and follow DECAL's current instructions rather than a third-party walkthrough.
Keep the profile current between jobs.
Georgia's rule lets a center keep orientation and training records in GaPDS, so a director who uses that option sees your GaPDS profile where another center would see a personnel file.
GaPDS career levels and what they unlock
Registration is the baseline; the career level is the part that scores.
Under Quality Rated's Portfolio Standard 1, "Director and Teacher Qualifications and GaPDS Verification," portfolio points depend on staff holding an active GaPDS career level — so the level your profile carries feeds your program's rating, not just its paperwork.
Those points matter because of how the rating is built: Quality Rated star ratings combine portfolio points (structural quality) with Environment Rating Scale classroom observations by Quality Rated assessors (process quality) to award one, two or three stars.
What the level scale itself looks like — how many levels Georgia defines and what education or training each requires — is set by DECAL and was not captured in the pages our research read, so treat your own GaPDS profile as the authority on your level.
There is money attached to rated status, too: DECAL announced a Quality Rated Workforce Bonus for eligible staff at star-rated programs on April 1, 2025.
Eligibility and amounts live in our Quality Rated Workforce Bonus guide.
How GaPDS records your training hours
Your GaPDS profile is where your training hours live in Georgia: the system holds each professional's training hours alongside credentials and employment history, and registration for approved trainings is built into it.
The licensing rule recognizes that role.
Chapter 591-1-1 lets a center document orientation and training in each staff member's personnel file and/or in GaPDS — so hours recorded in your GaPDS profile sit in one of the two places the rule names.
How many training hours Georgia actually requires, and how pre-service orientation differs from annual hours, are separate questions: our guide to training hours covers the annual side.
Using your GaPDS registry ID when job hunting
Expect the question in Georgia hiring processes.
A program working toward or holding a Quality Rated rating has to show that all instructional and administrative staff are registered in GaPDS, and its Standard 1 portfolio points ride on staff holding active career levels — which makes your registry ID part of applying to those programs.
The profile helps outside Quality Rated, too.
It consolidates training hours, credentials and employment history in one record, and it is one of the two places Georgia's rule names for keeping orientation and training documentation — which makes a current profile the portable version of your training paperwork.
If a CDA is in your plans, two Council for Professional Recognition rules are worth knowing: the Council accepts workforce registry transcripts from all U.S. state and territory registries as CDA documentation, but the Council's renewal guidance counts state registry membership — alongside PTA and teachers' union memberships and magazine subscriptions — as memberships that do not satisfy the CDA renewal membership requirement.
Ready to put the record to work?
Browse childcare teacher jobs on ChildcareHires.
Career and employer information, not licensing or legal advice. GaPDS is run by DECAL, which also licenses Georgia's child care learning centers — confirm the current registry and training rules with DECAL before you act on them.