How to Start a Daycare in Maryland: Licensing Steps, Costs and Staffing

Maryland child care is regulated by the Office of Child Care, the Division of Early Childhood arm of the Maryland State Department of Education (MSDE).

Centers follow COMAR 13A.16 and family child care homes follow COMAR 13A.15.

MSDE's Licensing Branch runs 13 Regional Licensing Offices, and those offices license centers and register family child care homes — your regional office is the contact for the orientation, the application packet and the pre-opening approvals summarized below.

Maryland registers — rather than licenses — family child care homes, and registration is not needed at all if the provider is a relative of every child, or a friend caring on a nonregular basis for less than 20 hours a month.

A registered family child care home may have at most 8 children, with no more than 4 under age 2; caring for more than 2 children under 2 takes Office approval and an additional adult, and the provider's own children under 6 count toward capacity.

A child care center, by contrast, is licensed under COMAR 13A.16, which carries the director, staffing, ratio and facility rules summarized below.

Maryland's rules also cover large family child care homes in a separate chapter (COMAR 13A.18) that our research did not cover — ask your regional licensing office about that route before you plan around it.

The application steps for a center are set out in COMAR 13A.16.02.02 and on MSDE's Office of Child Care pages.

Start with the MSDE-approved orientation: the online child care center orientation is mandatory before you submit a licensing application, and it does not replace the face-to-face orientation session at your regional Office of Child Care.

File a notice of intent to operate before seeking construction or operating permits, then submit the completed and signed application at least 60 days before the proposed opening date.

Background checks run with the application: Maryland requires federal and Maryland State criminal background checks for the center applicant, the director, every employee including substitutes and volunteers, and adults living on the premises, plus child and adult abuse record reviews — and anyone who lived in another state in the past 5 years also needs that state's criminal check.

MSDE also requires a 6-hour Medication Administration Training (MAT), taught by an approved RN, as pre-service training for anyone seeking a center license or a family child care registration.

Every Maryland center director must be at least 21, hold a high school diploma or GED (or two college courses), complete 90 clock hours of pre-service training or hold a CDA, and add 3 semester hours of administrative training, 9 hours of communication training, 3 hours of ADA training, and MSDE regulation training within 6 months.

Director education and experience scale with center size: 20 or fewer children calls for 1 year of experience; 21 to 40, 30 semester hours (20 in ECE) or 60 semester hours plus 2 years; more than 40, an associate degree with 15 ECE semester hours or a bachelor's in any field, plus 2 years.

Directors of centers serving infants or toddlers need an extra 3 semester hours of infant/toddler training and breastfeeding-support training.

A preschool child care teacher must be at least 19 with a diploma or GED and 90 clock hours of pre-service training or a CDA; aides can be 16 and work under direct supervision.

On the family child care path, the provider must be at least 18, the home must be the primary residence, and registration applicants need current first aid and CPR plus pre-service training before applying.

Maryland sets center ratios and maximum group sizes per age band in COMAR 13A.16.08.03: infants 1:3 with a maximum group of 6, toddlers 1:3 with a maximum group of 9, 2-year-olds 1:6 with a maximum of 12, 3- and 4-year-olds 1:10 with a maximum of 20, and ages 5 and older 1:15 with a maximum of 30.

A registered family child care home staffs to capacity instead: at most 8 children, with no more than 4 under age 2, and more than 2 children under 2 takes Office approval and an additional adult.

The staffing pattern the application requires is where those bands become a hiring plan — the youngest band you serve sets the tightest staffing constraint.

The fixed timeline marker is in the rule: the completed and signed application goes in at least 60 days before the proposed opening date, after the mandatory orientation and the notice of intent.

Our research did not confirm Maryland's center licensing fee — ask your regional Office of Child Care before you budget.

Beyond fees, the application's own requirements are the budget lines to price out: zoning and building code compliance, a fire inspection, use and occupancy permits, site and floor plans, and workers' compensation information.

Our research did not confirm dollar figures for those items either.

Your first resource is your regional licensing office — MSDE's Licensing Branch runs 13 of them.

Beyond licensing, Maryland EXCELS is the state's quality rating and improvement system, rating programs on a scale of 1 to 5, and licensed centers, registered family child care homes, licensed Head Start and public pre-K programs are all eligible to participate.

Participation matters if you plan to serve subsidy families: to use Maryland's Child Care Scholarship (CCS) Program, families must enroll their children in programs participating in Maryland EXCELS.

For staffing, MSDE's Child Care Career and Professional Development Fund pays participating Maryland colleges directly for child care providers earning a degree, with recipients owing a service commitment of at least 10 hours per week in an approved child care facility, and apprentices can receive the fund's tuition assistance for the Child Care Apprenticeship at Harford Community College.

T.E.A.C.H.

Early Childhood does not operate in Maryland, so that national scholarship route is not available to your staff.

The voluntary Maryland Child Care Credential — seven levels for child care staff and four for administrators, renewed every 12 months — gives staff a credential ladder alongside their licensing training.

Before opening, the application packet has to clear the site itself: Maryland center applicants submit evidence of compliance with zoning and building codes, site and floor plans, a fire inspection and use and occupancy permits, together with a fire evacuation plan.

The operating documents travel in the same packet — a plan of operation, a staffing pattern, a 4-week menu, a discipline policy and workers' compensation information.