Daycare emergency plan: what staff must know and practice

The federal floor comes from the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) rules: they require states to set emergency preparedness requirements for subsidy-receiving providers, and they name what those requirements must cover — evacuation, relocation, shelter-in-place and lockdown; staff and volunteer emergency preparedness training and practice drills; communication and reunification with families; continuity of operations; and accommodation of infants, toddlers and children with disabilities or chronic conditions (45 CFR 98.41).

Treat those coverage areas as the skeleton of your plan, and build each one out in writing.

States write their own versions.

Texas, for example, requires a center's emergency preparedness plan to include written procedures for evacuation, relocation and sheltering/lock-down, including specific procedures for children under 24 months and children with limited mobility (26 TAC 746.5202).

That last clause is the part a generic template misses: infants who cannot walk out on their own, and children who move slowly or with equipment, need named adults, named tools and a rehearsed route — or the written procedure is not really a procedure at all.

Around the required elements, the operator fills in the specifics: an evacuation route from every room, posted where the teacher can see it; a primary and a backup assembly point; a relocation site arranged with its owner in advance; shelter-in-place locations by emergency type; a lockdown procedure; and a communication chain that names who calls emergency services, who calls families and who answers the calls that come in.

Add the items that travel with the group: attendance rosters, an emergency binder holding each child's contact and pick-up information, first-aid supplies and the medications children need during the day.

Continuity of operations — the last coverage area on the federal list — is the piece that runs after the emergency itself is over: how you decide to close for the day, how enrolled families hear about it, and what has to be true before care resumes.

Writing it down keeps those decisions with the director instead of leaving them to whoever answers the phone.

Put the finished procedures where staff will actually read them: in your staff handbook, plus a quick-sheet summary in each classroom.

This is the same document family as your written operational policies — for example, Texas requires centers to keep written operational policies covering medical emergencies and parent notifications, among other topics (26 TAC 746.501).

Your state's list of what must be written is its own; get it from your state child care licensing agency.

The specific requirements are state rules, and the Texas citations are one state's structure — not a national standard. Confirm your state's emergency-preparedness requirements with your state child care licensing agency before you finalize the plan.

And if you are still opening a center, confirm them before you draft it: the plan, the drill calendar and your staffing pattern all get built around the same rules.

Drills are how the plan stops being paper.

Texas, for example, requires centers to practice a fire drill every month — with children able to safely exit the building within three minutes — a severe-weather sheltering drill at least four times a year, and a lock-down drill at least four times a year, and to document each drill (26 TAC 746.5205).

The cadence where you operate comes from your state child care licensing agency, and it is worth reading the rule yourself rather than inheriting a calendar from another provider.

Practice drills are not a Texas idea — they are one of the coverage areas the federal CCDF rules require states to address, and the rule names staff and volunteers together (45 CFR 98.41).

Build the rotation so both get the practice: a part-time volunteer stands at the same assembly point as your lead teachers, and a substitute covering a room should be handed that room's drill role along with the attendance sheet.

Vary what each drill rehearses, because the plan has to work at the hardest moment of the day, not the easiest.

Run one from the playground.

Run one at nap time.

Run one with a floater covering a room.

And practice the walk to the relocation site, not just the headcount at the assembly point — the relocation site is where the plan gets hard, and the first time staff walk it should not be during a real evacuation.

Document every drill, and document more than the minimum: date, time, which rooms participated, how long the building took to clear, and what went wrong.

Texas' rule requires each drill to be documented (26 TAC 746.5205), and the log does a second job too: it is how you notice your evacuation time drifting as staff turn over.

A center that logs the misses as well as the successes gets a training calendar out of the same paperwork.

The drill calendar also depends on training.

Montana, for example, requires staff to finish orientation topics including emergency preparedness within 90 days of hire (ARM 37.96.914(4)) — a reminder that drills and training are one system, and that the topics new staff must cover come from your state's rules.

Confirm both calendars with your state child care licensing agency.

An emergency plan names roles before it needs them.

When the alarm sounds, no one negotiates who calls emergency services or who grabs the roster — the plan already said.

Texas requires a center's plan procedures to be written (26 TAC 746.5202), and the role assignments belong inside those written procedures, not in the director's head.

A workable assignment sheet gives every staff member something to carry.

In each room, the lead counts children at every transition and keeps the roster in hand; a sweep checks bathrooms, nap areas and closets as the room leaves; one adult carries the emergency binder, the first-aid bag and the medications.

Someone places the emergency-services call, someone sends the family messages, and the director runs the incident — decisions, responders, reunification.

Floaters, kitchen and front-desk staff get assignments too: doors, headcount support, phone coverage.

Then assign the hard part by name: who evacuates the children under 24 months, and who evacuates the children with limited mobility.

Texas names both groups in its rule (26 TAC 746.5202) — infants cannot walk themselves out, and a child who moves with equipment needs an adult who has practiced moving them.

Train the adults you name, and rehearse it at drill pace, not at discussion pace.

Every named role needs a named backup, and the backup needs the same practice.

The honest test of the sheet is absence: run a drill on a day when the person assigned to rosters is out, and see what happens.

Volunteers belong in this too — the federal coverage list pairs staff and volunteer emergency preparedness training and practice drills (45 CFR 98.41), so the volunteer in the building on drill day gets a role, not a window seat.

Write the roles into onboarding so a new hire learns their drill assignment before their first drill, and ask the question when you interview: "what is your role in a fire drill?" is a fair question for an experienced teacher, and the answer tells you whether their last center practiced.

The assignments also live next to your scheduling — the same who-covers-what map drives the daily staffing schedule and the emergency sheet, so update the two together when coverage changes.

Reunification — moving each child from the assembly point or relocation site into the right adult's hands — is one of the coverage areas the federal CCDF rules require states to address, named alongside communication with families (45 CFR 98.41).

It is also the part of the plan that determines what the rest of the day looks like once the emergency itself is over.

Reunification runs on the data collected at admission.

Texas, for example, requires centers to collect, before admitting a child, the parents' names and reachable phone numbers, an emergency contact, and the people authorized for pick-up, among other items (26 TAC 746.605).

Those fields are the reunification system: the numbers staff call, the backups when a parent is unreachable, and the list of adults a child may leave with.

Keep them current — a pick-up list from two enrollment cycles ago is not a list.

Design the reunification point as its own place, separate from where children first assemble.

Children stay with their group and their roster; the adult holding the roster releases each child by name against the authorized-pick-up list; and identification gets checked even for faces staff recognize — a crowded, anxious pickup is no time to skip that check.

No child leaves on a wave and a nod, and the sign-out sheet goes back into the binder as the record of who left with whom.

Communication is the other half of the coverage area.

The plan names the channel — a mass message, a call tree, a staffed phone line — and the person who sends it, so the director is not writing to every family from a parking lot.

Families hear four things: where their child is, whether anyone was hurt, where and when to pick up, and what to bring with them.

And write down the steps for the child whose family cannot be reached: call the emergency contact next, log every attempt with its time, and keep the child with their group until an authorized adult arrives.

These are steps nobody should read for the first time during the event itself — which is the argument for rehearsing reunification the way the evacuation is rehearsed.

The admission data, the authorized-pick-up lists and the notification duties are state rules, and Texas' lists above are its example, not a national one; confirm them with your state child care licensing agency.

This page is employer information, not licensing or legal advice. Emergency-preparedness requirements — the plan, the drills, the training and the reunification duties — are set by your state's child care licensing rules. Confirm the current requirements with your state child care licensing agency before you finalize your plan, your drill calendar or your staff training.