Assistant director job description template (duties, qualifications, schedule)

Key duties and responsibilities

Start from the split, not from a director template.

An assistant director posting that copies a director's duty list reads as the director's job at an assistant's price, and the candidates you want — deputies who can hold the center — screen themselves out or negotiate around it.

Decide what moves from you or your director to this role outright, what is shared, and what stays put, then write the posting from that list.

Give each duty an owner and, where it matters, an authority line: does this hire set the weekly schedule, sit in on hiring, close a family complaint without escalating, approve day-to-day spending, run the center while the director is off-site?

Whatever your posting title says — assistant director, assistant director of daycare, assistant preschool director — that authority list is what the title means at your center.

Group the duties so a candidate can see the shape of the week:

• Coverage and scheduling: the daily staffing schedule, built around the staff-to-child ratios your license operates under, plus opening and closing and call-out coverage — with the hours this person spends covering in a classroom stated as a number, not an "as needed."
• Front office and families: tours, enrollment paperwork, tuition billing and the day-to-day family conversations the director never hears.
• Records: the staff, child and training records your state child care licensing agency requires your center to keep, and the tracking that keeps them current.
• Classroom leadership: modeling practice, coaching teachers and covering rooms in the age groups you name.
• Health and safety: drills, medication and allergy documentation, and incident logs.

Our guide to how to hire an assistant director walks through drawing the line between director duties, assistant-director duties and lead-teacher duties before you write a single line.

Do it first — the same list becomes your screening rubric.

Minimum and preferred qualifications

Your state's child care licensing agency writes the rule on who may hold a leadership role in a center, so keep the first minimum line placeholder-phrased — "meets [state] child care licensing requirements for the [assistant director title your state uses]" — and confirm the exact education, credential and experience bar with your licensing consultant before you post.

Requirements differ by state and change; a national template cannot substitute for your state's rule.

Then add the line a director posting does not need: when this hire covers in a classroom, the ratio question follows them into that room, so name the qualification your state's rule sets for counting in ratio in each age group this hire will cover — "meets the qualification for counting in ratio in [age groups]" as its own line.

A leadership title does not answer the ratio question by itself; ask your licensing consultant for both answers in writing.

Move everything that is not part of your state's rule into "preferred": a CDA or other early-childhood credential beyond the state minimum, experience scheduling and supervising teachers, enrollment or billing experience, coverage across age groups, or bilingual fluency in the languages your families speak.

A credential wall above what your state requires shrinks your applicant pool without changing what your license demands.

Rules differ by state and change. Confirm the qualification rules that apply to this hire with your state child care licensing agency before you post or offer.

Physical requirements and schedule

This is a two-sided job, and the posting should say so.

Classroom days carry floor time with children, lifting children and materials, and standing and walking for long stretches; office days carry records, billing, tours and the phone.

Write both — candidates planning around a desk job and candidates planning around a full classroom day both deserve the truth.

Under the ADA, physical requirements in a job description should describe the job's essential functions, and the EEOC requires accommodation for applicants with disabilities unless the accommodation causes the employer significant difficulty or expense.

Our research found no federal or national licensing rule that sets a lifting weight for childcare jobs — a line like "must lift 40 lbs" is an employer's practice, not a requirement — so state the function, not a figure.

And under the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, employers with 15 or more employees must reasonably accommodate known limitations related to pregnancy, childbirth or related conditions.

Then the schedule, stated honestly: which days the role opens and which it closes, the daily block spent covering in ratio, staff meetings, required training days, and whether evening events like family nights are expected.

A posting that hides the split invites an early resignation.

How to write the pay and benefits line

Put a real range in the posting.

The benchmark: BLS's OEWS survey for May 2025 puts education and childcare administrators, preschool and daycare (SOC 11-9031) — the category that covers the people who run preschools and daycare centers — at a U.S. median of $59,300 a year ($28.51 an hour), with the middle half earning $47,040 to $75,500 and the full spread from $38,580 (10th percentile) to $98,240 (90th).

Those are national, all-industry figures for the occupation, spanning directors and administrators across settings — a leadership-tier reference point, not a figure published for the assistant director title.

Our assistant director salary page explains what the benchmark covers, and the childcare director salary page carries the state-by-state table for the same category.

Position the range against your own scale before you write it down: look at what you pay your lead teachers, because the candidates you want are doing that work one step down, and an offer at or barely above it buys the title without the commitment.

In eight states verified from primary sources, pay disclosure in the posting is not optional for the employers each law covers:

• California: employers with 15 or more employees must include the pay scale in any job posting (Labor Code 432.3).
• Colorado: the Equal Pay for Equal Work Act requires compensation disclosure in all job postings, internal and public, including benefits information.
• New York: businesses with four or more employees must list compensation ranges in postings for jobs, promotions and transfers (Labor Law 194-b).
• Washington: employers with 15 or more employees must disclose the wage scale or salary range and a general description of benefits in each posting (RCW 49.58.110).
• Illinois: employers with 15 or more employees must include the pay scale and benefits in any specific job posting — a hyperlink to a public page with that information satisfies the rule (820 ILCS 112/10(b-25)).
• Minnesota: employers with 30 or more employees in Minnesota must include a good-faith salary range in job postings (Minn. Stat. 181.173).
• Massachusetts: since October 29, 2025, employers with 25 or more employees must disclose wage ranges in job postings.
• Vermont: employers with five or more employees must include the compensation or range of compensation in any advertisement of a Vermont job opening.

More states are reported by secondary trackers to require pay ranges as of October 2026; our research did not verify those against primary sources, so confirm your state labor department's current rule before you post.

Where no rule applies, a specific range and a plain benefits list — health coverage, paid time off, professional development, a child care discount if you offer one — give an assistant director candidate something to say yes to. "Depends on experience" gives them nothing.

Mistakes that shrink your applicant pool

The costliest mistakes are wording, not budget:

• Preference wording. An ad that shows a preference based on a protected trait is illegal — the EEOC's examples are help-wanted ads seeking "females" or "recent college graduates." In childcare wording, "young, energetic" and female-only requests are out.
• A lifting weight stated as a requirement. Our research found no federal or national licensing rule that sets one — describe the essential function instead.
• A director's duty list at an assistant's price. If the posting owns the whole center but the pay line says assistant, experienced deputies read it as a downgrade and skip it. Post the split you actually mean.
• A credential wall above your state's rule. Require what your state requires; prefer the rest.
• A pay line that hides the number. In the eight states above, posting pay is required by law for the employers each state's law covers; where no rule applies, "depends on experience" still gives a candidate nothing to evaluate.
• No room to accommodate. The ADA expects a job description's physical requirements to describe essential functions, and the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act requires employers with 15 or more employees to reasonably accommodate known limitations related to pregnancy, childbirth or related conditions — phrase the requirements as the functions the role truly needs.

What to do after you post

Paper-screen against the duties-and-authority list you wrote first, respond to strong candidates quickly, and run a structured interview that covers both sides of the job — the office scenarios and the classroom ones.

Then the background check: start your state's process at offer and build its timetable into your start date; our guide to background checks for childcare hires walks the steps.

Once the posting is live, see what candidates see on our assistant director jobs page — and if you are still choosing where to advertise, our guide to where to post childcare jobs compares the channels.

This page is employer information, not licensing or legal advice. Confirm qualification, posting and background-check rules with your state child care licensing agency, pay-transparency rules with your state labor department, and accommodation questions with the EEOC or your employment counsel.