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

Child care licensing in New York runs through the New York State Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS), whose child day care rules live in 18 NYCRR: Part 413 carries the definitions and background-check rules, Parts 416 and 417 cover group family and family day care homes, and Subpart 418-1 governs centers.

By the rule's own definition, a child day care center is a program or facility that is not a residence, providing child day care on a regular basis to more than six children for more than three hours per day per child, for compensation or otherwise.

One caveat matters if you are opening inside New York City: our research points to NYC group child care centers being permitted by the city Department of Health and Mental Hygiene under Health Code Article 47 rather than licensed by OCFS, but we could not confirm that split on OCFS pages, which were unreachable during our research, so make confirming it your first question to the agency.

Head count and setting decide which New York license type fits.

In a family home, family day care is care for three to six children for more than three hours per day per child, and a provider may go to seven or eight children when no more than six are under school age and the school-agers attend before or after school or in school breaks, subject to OCFS inspection.

Group family day care serves seven to twelve children in a family home, plus up to four additional school-age children before and after school.

Outside a residence, a small day care center cares for three through six children and a child day care center for more than six, both for more than three hours per day per child.

A school-age child care program is a non-residential program serving an enrolled group of seven or more children under 13 before and after school.

The adults in charge clear a bar too: family and group family day care providers must be at least 18 with two years of experience caring for children under six, or one year plus six hours of early childhood training, and child-rearing counts as experience.

New York builds requirements in before the paperwork even starts: before OCFS issues a center license application to a new applicant, the applicant must complete an OCFS-approved pre-application orientation session.

For a family day care registration, the applicant must complete an OCFS-approved health and safety training course meeting federal preservice requirements before the office issues the initial registration.

Background clearance runs alongside: New York's child care clearance includes a national criminal record check with the FBI, searches of the New York State Sex Offender Registry and the National Sex Offender Registry and of other states' registries where the person lived during the past five years, and in a family or group family day care home every person age 18 or older living in the home is fingerprinted.

On inspection, the rule text we read names OCFS inspection only where a family day care home expands to seven or eight children; the center inspection sequence and a processing timeline were not confirmed in our research because OCFS's site was unreachable, so confirm the current process and timeline with OCFS.

One director route: a bachelor's degree including or plus 12 credits in early childhood or child development, one year of full-time teaching and one of supervising staff.

Alternates: the New York State Children's Program Administrator Credential with the same experience, or an associate's degree or CDA with a plan of study, two years of teaching and two of supervising staff.

In centers licensed for 45 or more children, group and assistant teachers may not perform the administrative, fiscal and supervision functions; below 45, a director-qualified teacher may.

The minimum age for a center staff person is 16, but no person under 18 may be left alone with a group at any time, even in an emergency; except in an emergency, only a director, group teacher or assistant teacher may supervise a group independently.

Directors, teachers and volunteers complete OCFS-approved federal minimum health and safety training preservice or within three months of starting, then at least 30 hours of training every two years: 15 in the first six months and at least five hours every year.

New York requires at least one staff person with valid CPR and first aid certification on the premises during operating hours, not every staff member.

Your staffing model comes from the ratio and group-size chart in Subpart 418-1.8.

Two anchors: infants six weeks to 18 months need one teacher for every four children with a maximum group size of eight, and toddlers 18 to 36 months are staffed at 1:5 with a maximum group size of 12.

The same subpart sets ratios and group sizes for every age band up through school-age, and it lets infants under six weeks be cared for only with OCFS approval, at 1:3 with a maximum group of six.

Homes run a different chart: a family or group family day care home must have one caregiver for every two children under two years of age.

And in centers, infants are never mixed with other age groups except in OCFS-approved continuity-of-care classrooms.

This is the section where we owe you a straight answer: our research could not verify New York's center application fee, the processing timeline or the OCFS online application portal, because OCFS's site returned connection errors on every attempt on our research date.

We also found no verified New York startup-cost figure in any source we read.

What the rule text does confirm is where the time and the required steps go before opening: the pre-application orientation for center applicants, the background clearances, the health and safety training before a family day care registration issues, and a director who meets the qualification rule from day one.

Get the current fee schedule and processing times directly from OCFS before you build a budget on them.

One resource for a new operator is QUALITYstarsNY, the state's voluntary quality rating and improvement system for regulated early childhood programs, and there is no cost to programs to participate.

Participation opens the QUALITYstarsNY Academic Scholarship for your staff: tuition for one course per semester, with a maximum of two per year, for staff working 20 or more hours per week in a teaching or leadership role at a participating program, after at least 12 months of continuous employment there.

Applicants need an active Aspire Registry member ID, the Aspire Registry being New York's early childhood workforce registry, and anyone eligible for New York's Educational Incentive Program must use EIP funding first.

Our research could not verify EIP's current maximum award, and the most recent workforce retention grant we found was a 2023 OCFS round reported in a third-party blog; we could not confirm its bonus amounts or a current round, so ask OCFS what is open now.

One route our research did not find in New York: the state does not appear on the T.E.A.C.H.

Early Childhood National Center's Programs by State list as of our October 2026 research date.