Massachusetts Daycare Ratios: Staff-to-Child Ratios and Group Sizes by Age

Massachusetts sets center staff-to-child ratios by age band in 606 CMR 7.00, the child care licensing rules the Department of Early Education and Care (EEC) administers.

Infants up to 15 months old are staffed at 1:3, toddlers 15 to 33 months at 1:4, and preschoolers 33 months to school age at 1:10 in full-day programs or 1:12 in half-day programs.

Kindergarten groups run at 1:15 and school-age groups at 1:13.

EEC licenses a program as a small group and school age child care program when it serves ten or fewer children outside a private residence, and as a large group and school age child care program when it regularly receives more than ten children under 14 who are unrelated to their caregivers.

Each Massachusetts ratio comes with a maximum group size: 7 children in an infant group, 9 in a toddler group, 20 in a full-day preschool group, 24 in a half-day preschool group, 30 in kindergarten and 26 in school age.

Group size and ratio limit different things: the ratio sets how many staff a group needs, while the group size caps how many children the group itself can hold.

Both figures sit in the same ratio table in 606 CMR 7.10.

EEC sets a separate mixed-age table alongside the fixed-age ratios.

An infant/toddler group is capped at 9 children with no more than three infants and staffed at 1:3; a toddler/preschool group is capped at 9 and staffed at 1:5; and a preschool/school-age group, with children no older than age eight, is capped at 20 and staffed at 1:10.

Napping brings its own supervision line for the youngest infants, set out in the rule text below.

Volunteers and student interns count toward Massachusetts staff-to-child ratios only if they are at least 16 years of age in small and large group and school age child care programs, or at least 18 years of age in family child care, and only if they are assigned to the program for at least three months.

A volunteer or intern assigned for a shorter stretch does not count toward the ratio.

Which educators can hold lead teacher and teacher roles is a separate question, set by EEC's educator qualifications rather than by the ratio table.

Massachusetts family child care is care in a private residence for no more than ten children under 14 years old, or under 16 with special needs.

One educator may care for six or fewer children, with no more than three of them under age two.

A home reaches seven or eight children only when all children over six are school age, and nine or ten children require two educators.

Those are the home rules; the center table above does not transfer to a residence.

Here is how the table converts into headcount on the floor, as an illustration of the rule rather than a staffing plan for any particular center.

An infant room with six babies needs two staff at 1:3, and a full infant group of seven takes three.

A toddler room of eight needs two staff at 1:4, and a full-day preschool room of twenty needs two at 1:10.

A mixed infant/toddler group of nine with three infants runs at 1:3, so it needs three staff.

Schedules, breaks and transitions change the day-to-day headcount, so confirm the staffing plan for your rooms with EEC.

The ratios and group sizes on this page are the figures in 606 CMR 7.00, the EEC rulebook our research read on mass.gov in the edition published April 2025.

Licensing rules are revised from time to time, and our research cannot rule out amendments after the edition we read, so confirm the current table with EEC before you staff a room or set a schedule.