How to start a summer day camp for school-age children

There is no single national answer: which rules reach a day camp is decided by each state's child care licensing agency, and a state can treat a camp differently from a year-round center depending on what the program is — general supervised day care, a single-skill sports or arts camp, a municipal recreation program — and, as the Texas exemption below shows, even how long the program runs.

The examples below are named-state examples from Texas and Montana, not a national pattern.

Your agency's answer controls.

Texas draws several doors that matter to camp operators.

A youth camp licensed by the Department of State Health Services (DSHS) is exempt from child care licensing — a camp operating under that state youth-camp license sits outside the child care licensing system.

Texas also exempts any child-care facility that operates for less than three consecutive weeks and less than 40 days in a period of 12 months — a ceiling that a schedule running week after week across the summer does not fit.

The single-skill exemption is another Texas door: a program in which a child receives direct instruction in one skill — a sport, an art — is exempt if it does not advertise as child care, tells parents it is unlicensed and about the physical risks involved, and runs DPS background checks on all staff and volunteers.

The conditions are part of the exemption; dropping the disclosures or the checks means the exemption no longer describes your program.

Texas also exempts before- and after-school programs run directly by — or under approved contract with — an accredited educational facility, and municipal recreation programs for ages 5 to 13 that adopt local standards by ordinance and tell parents they are unlicensed: the line a city summer recreation program in Texas reads itself against.

Montana shows the other shape.

Under its licensing rules, any provider regularly serving seven or more children must be licensed or registered — child care centers must be licensed — while drop-in and school-age facilities may choose whether to be licensed.

A camp that takes the license then runs under the licensed school-age rules, including the ratio below; Montana's current rules (ARM Title 37, chapter 96) took effect May 1, 2025.

One federal floor sits under all of it: license-exempt does not mean rule-free once public money enters.

Under the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) rules, license-exempt providers who are paid with CCDF subsidy must still meet federal health, safety and background-check requirements — under the health and safety rules, the relatives specified in 45 CFR 98.42(c) are the main exception.

Confirm your posture in writing before you sign a lease, post a job or enroll a camper. Your state child care licensing agency decides whether your camp is exempt, registrable or licensed.

Describe your hours, ages, enrollment, setting and activities, and ask which rules apply to you.

A camp day leans on the indoors-outdoors cycle: check-in and pickup windows, large-muscle and outdoor play, themed activities, and lunch and rest coverage.

Plan the space around that shape — a check-in point, rooms that group cleanly by age, outdoor play space, storage for seasonal gear, and an indoor plan that still works on a heat or storm day.

Expect the licensing application to ask about the building, not just the program.

Application content varies by state and facility type; as one example, a Maryland child care center application must include zoning and building-code compliance, floor plans, a written plan of operation, workers' compensation insurance information, a fire evacuation plan, a personnel list and a staffing pattern.

Our guide to daycare building requirements covers what facilities are asked to show.

Emergency planning has a federal floor too.

The CCDF rules require states to set emergency-preparedness requirements for subsidy-receiving providers, covering evacuation, relocation, shelter-in-place and lockdown procedures, staff and volunteer training and 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).

Where your camp sits relative to that rule depends on whether and how it takes subsidy — ask your state child care licensing agency.

Confirm capacity before you commit to a space. Your enrollment ceiling, room capacities and outdoor-space expectations come from your licensing agency's rules for your facility type — get them in writing before you sign a lease, and name your planned activities, including any swimming, off-site trips or transportation, when you ask.

A camp hires a season, not a year: the whole cycle — job posts, interviews, background checks, training — compresses into the spring, and the roster rolls off when the season ends, which is why rehiring and returning staff belong in the plan from the first post.

Camps post roles under their own titles — camp director, group lead, counselor — but the hiring questions are the ones our guide to staffing a new program sequences, and the role-level detail lives in how to hire a school-age teacher.

Ratios and group sizes for school-age campers are your state's numbers — federal CCDF rules set no numeric ratio; each state describes its own group sizes and ratios by age in the CCDF Plan it files.

Montana's licensed school-age rule is a worked example: a maximum ratio of 20:1 for children five and over, with a maximum group size of 40 (ARM 37.96.106(4)) — a group at that 40-child maximum needs at least two staff on the floor at that ratio.

The state-by-state picture is collected in our guide to school-age childcare ratios.

Build the roster against who actually counts.

In Montana, only the director, site directors, lead teachers, teachers, substitutes and trainees count toward ratios — support staff and volunteers do not — and volunteers must be at least 15, needing background checks only if they will have unsupervised access to children (ARM 37.96.106(2)(c), 37.96.913, 37.96.910).

A volunteer bench adds hands; it does not add coverage.

The general pattern is explained in our guide to who counts toward ratio.

Age minimums for staff are state rules too.

Montana's: a lead teacher — an optional role there — must be at least 18, a teacher must be at least 16 and work under a lead teacher, site director or director, and a trainee must be at least 16 and may not be left alone with children until the 30-day orientation training is done, with a 90-day cap on staying a trainee.

Hiring minors raises employer-side questions of its own; our guide to hiring high school students covers them.

The safety requirements land on a compressed calendar.

In Montana, staff counted in ratio must complete hands-on infant, child and adult CPR, infant choking response and pediatric first aid within 30 days of hire and before any unsupervised care; staff and owners working more than 500 hours a year complete registry-approved annual training — 8 hours in licensed school-age care, 16 in licensed centers — and background checks run before working and annually after, with the national components every five years (Montana DOJ and FBI fingerprints, the national and Montana sex-offender registries, and child-protective-services and name-based criminal checks for Montana and every state the person lived in during the past five years).

Our employer's guide to the background-check process walks the steps.

Confirm every number with your licensing agency. Ratios, group sizes, who counts toward ratio, staff age minimums, training hours and background-check components are set by your state child care licensing agency, and they change — Montana's current rules only took effect May 1, 2025.

Our research did not confirm a national startup figure for a summer day camp, and the budget turns on the space you start from, the capacity you build to and the season you staff.

Plan in two stacks.

The one-time stack: lease and deposit, build-out, furnishings and equipment, insurance, application and licensing fees where your state charges them, and background-check fees.

The recurring stack is dominated by seasonal payroll — the wage split below shows why.

On build-out, the honest answer is that it depends on the space — our research did not verify a per-square-foot build-out figure from a primary source, so treat any specific number you see with suspicion.

Price insurance before you open.

Texas, for example, requires every licensed or registered child care operation to carry liability insurance of $100,000 per occurrence covering injury to children on the premises or in its care, with proof filed annually.

Our guide to daycare insurance breaks the coverage types down.

Staffing is the cost that decides whether the season works.

A September 2021 U.S. Treasury report, citing a Center for American Progress cost analysis, put wages at 50 to 60 percent or more of child care expenses on U.S. averages, and said most for-profit child care facilities operate on razor-thin profit margins, usually below 1 percent.

A camp sharpens the point: revenue arrives inside a season measured in weeks, but payroll, training time and background checks all land before the first session — budget backward from staffing, not forward from enrollment.

For the year-round math — facility, equipment, insurance, staffing and enrollment working together — our guide to what it costs to start a daycare breaks the budget down line by line.

Work the sequence in this order.

First, ask your state child care licensing agency — in writing — whether your camp is exempt, registrable or licensed, describing your hours, ages, enrollment, setting and activities (include swimming, off-site trips and transportation if you plan them) and who will run the program; in Texas, ask which door fits — child care licensing or DSHS youth-camp licensing.

Second, test the session plan against the exemptions' limits before you market sessions: Texas's short-session exemption, for one, covers facilities operating less than three consecutive weeks and less than 40 days in 12 months, and a full-summer schedule does not fit it.

Third, lock the space and confirm zoning, capacity and the application list for it before you sign.

Fourth, budget backward from staffing — wages, training time and background checks all come due before revenue does.

Fifth, hire before you enroll: post the lead roles first, start background checks the day offers go out, and build orientation and safety training to finish before the first session.

For licensed, regulated or registered programs and any program eligible for CCDF subsidy, the federal CCDF background-check rules (45 CFR 98.43), as your state implements them, govern whether and when a new hire may start while checks are still pending; a license-exempt camp should ask its licensing agency — or, for a Texas youth camp, DSHS — what applies to it.

Our guide to provisional hires pending a background check covers the employer steps, and your licensing agency confirms the current conditions.

Sixth, set the operating policies before opening day: sign-in and release, pickup authorization, illness exclusions, incident documentation and your emergency plan.

The enrollment packet carries required items of its own — Texas, for example, requires collecting each child's pick-up authorizations and transportation and field-trip permissions among the admission data a center must have before admitting a child (26 TAC 746.605).

Families are the camp's customers, so the enrollment agreement, handbook and payment policies belong on the same list — written from your side of the desk.

And know where this model ends.

A camp that grows into year-round care is licensing a different program — the application, policy and staffing steps to start a daycare are their own sequence.

This page is employer information, not licensing or legal advice. Licensing exemptions, camp and school-age ratios, staff age minimums, training hours, background checks and insurance requirements are set and enforced by your state child care licensing agency and the other agencies named — confirm the current rules there before you open, hire or enroll.