Georgia's Quality Rated Workforce Bonus pays eligible childcare teachers and support staff $500 a year — one payment per staff member per year — for working at a program that holds a 1-, 2- or 3-star Quality Rated rating.
You need 30 or more hours a week (15 or more at school-age-only programs), at least 90 days at your program, and an application during your program's assigned month.
Here is who qualifies, what it pays and how the application works.
What the Georgia Quality Rated Workforce Bonus is
The Quality Rated Workforce Bonus is a $500 annual payment from Georgia to eligible teachers and support staff who work at a program holding a Quality Rated rating — one payment per staff member per year.
DECAL (Bright from the Start: Georgia Department of Early Care and Learning) announced the program on April 1, 2025, funded with about $17 million a year in federal CCDF money.
Quality Rated is Georgia's quality rating and improvement system.
It awards one, two or three stars to programs that meet or exceed the state's minimum requirements, and a rating is earned rather than automatic: star levels combine a portfolio documenting structural quality with classroom observations on the Environment Rating Scales (ERS) by Quality Rated assessors.
Participation is voluntary — a program chooses to seek a rating.
Since December 31, 2021, however, providers must be Quality Rated, or in Provisional or Probationary status, to receive CAPS subsidy funding.
The bonus is the same $500 whether your program holds one star or three, and the setting is flexible: it covers eligible staff at Quality Rated child care learning centers and family child care learning homes.
Georgia pairs it with a second quality-linked payment, Commitment to Quality (C2Q), paid quarterly to CAPS programs rated 2 or 3 stars — that money goes to the program, so ask your director whether your site receives it.
Who qualifies for the bonus
The published eligibility terms are about your hours, your tenure and your program's rating.
You qualify as full-time on-site teacher or support staff working 30 or more hours a week — 15 or more hours if your program is school-age-only — and you must have worked at the program for at least 90 days.
Your program's rating is the other half of the test.
The bonus exists only at programs holding a 1-, 2- or 3-star Quality Rated rating, at child care learning centers and family child care learning homes alike.
At an unrated program there is no bonus to apply for, so the practical route to the money is a job at a program that holds a rating.
When you interview, ask any center you are considering two questions: whether it holds a Quality Rated rating, and which month DECAL has assigned it for bonus applications.
When you compare employers, childcare teacher jobs shows what centers near you are hiring for — and both questions are worth asking any Georgia program you contact.
The amount is the same $500 at every star level, and the published terms scale nothing by education or credential — unlike programs where your level sets the payment, such as WAGE$ in North Carolina or Maine's registry-tiered stipends.
Your qualifications still matter indirectly: Quality Rated's Portfolio Standard 1 covers director and teacher qualifications, and all instructional and administrative staff at a Quality Rated program must be registered in the Georgia Professional Development System (GaPDS).
What a Georgia center asks of you at hiring is its own topic — our guide to staff requirements in this state and beyond covers it.
If you want education-linked money, that runs through a separate program: DECAL Scholars provides CDA scholarships, incentives, educational counseling and academic scholarships to Georgia early educators.
DECAL administers those as educational assistance programs — separate from the workforce bonus.
How much the bonus pays
The payment is $500 per eligible staff member, once a year, at every Quality Rated star level.
In calendar year 2025, DECAL reports issuing the $500 bonus to 19,716 ECE professionals; the April 2025 launch release had referenced a pool of 34,000 eligible-pool educators.
For scale against Georgia wages: BLS OEWS data for May 2025 puts the median Georgia childcare worker (SOC 39-9011) at $13.47 an hour, or $28,020 a year.
The full wage tables by role are on our daycare teacher salary page.
Note that the bonus does not change that hourly rate — it is a separate annual payment on top of your program's wages, not a raise.
How to apply or renew
Applications run on DECAL's calendar: staff apply during the program's assigned application month, through DECAL's Quality Rated payments site (decalqrpayments.com).
Because the window is assigned to the program, your director is the fastest route to the two facts you need — your program's current rating status and which month is yours.
Confirm your program holds a rating
The bonus exists only at 1-, 2- or 3-star Quality Rated programs, so your first check is whether your program holds a current rating. Your director can confirm it.Check your hours and tenure against the terms
You need to work 30 or more hours a week (15 or more at school-age-only programs) and to have been at the program at least 90 days. The pages we read do not address time worked at a previous program, so ask DECAL how that counts if you switched jobs recently.Get your program's assigned month
DECAL assigns each program a month to apply, and staff apply during that window. Confirm the month with your director early rather than after it closes.Apply through the Quality Rated payments site
The application turns on the terms above — your hours, your time at the program and your program's rating — so have those details straight before the window opens.Track the annual cycle
The bonus is one payment per staff member per year. The pages we read do not state whether a prior year's approval carries over, so treat each year's window as its own application and confirm the renewal steps with DECAL.
One boundary worth naming: everything above is the staff-side process.
Earning and keeping a Quality Rated rating — the portfolio, the ERS observations, the program's overall standing — sits with the program and DECAL, not with individual staff applying for the bonus.
The published terms tie the bonus to programs holding a 1-, 2- or 3-star rating, so your program's rating status matters to you even though you do not manage it.
Confirm the current terms with DECAL
Taxes and timing
On timing: the bonus is annual — one payment per staff member per year — and applications happen during your program's assigned month.
The program launched in 2025: DECAL announced it on April 1, 2025 and reports issuing 19,716 of the $500 bonuses that calendar year.
Payment dates after you apply were not stated on the pages we read, so ask DECAL or your director when checks land.
On taxes: DECAL notes the bonus may be taxable.
What the program's pages do not settle is how the payment is reported or whether anything is withheld before it reaches you.
Keep any letters or forms the program sends you, and treat the tax question as one to ask rather than assume.
No tax guidance here — ask before you file
Similar programs in other states
Georgia's flat, rating-linked $500 has a specific shape.
Other states put bonus money into early educators' pockets with different mechanics:
- North Carolina — Child Care WAGE$. Education-based salary supplements for teachers, directors and family child care providers in participating counties; Early Years reports an average six-month supplement of $1,285.
- Illinois — Great START. A wage supplement paid by check every six months to practitioners with college coursework who stay with the same employer.
- Maine — Early Childhood Educator Workforce Salary Supplement. Monthly stipends paid through licensed programs, tiered by MRTQ Registry level.
- Connecticut — Qualified Workforce Incentive. Awards of up to $2,600 applied for through the OEC Registry.
Our guide to state wage supplements and bonuses maps every program we could verify as of October 2026 — amounts, eligibility and the programs that have ended.
This page is career information, not licensing, legal or tax advice. Program rules, amounts and deadlines change; confirm current details with DECAL (Bright from the Start: Georgia Department of Early Care and Learning), which administers Quality Rated and the workforce bonus.