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

New Jersey sets child care center ratios by age in the Manual of Requirements for Child Care Centers, which the Department of Children and Families (DCF) Office of Licensing administers.

The rule requires one staff member for every 4 children under 18 months.

From 18 months to 2½ years the ratio is 1:6.

From 2½ years to age 4 it is 1:10, for 4-year-olds it is 1:12, and for children 5 and older it is 1:15.

The current manual took effect December 20, 2023 and expires December 20, 2030.

Group size caps how many children a single group can hold even when staffing meets the ratio.

New Jersey sets infants in groups of 4 per primary caregiver and toddlers in groups of 6.

Children 2½ and older are in groups of no more than 20, a cap the rule text applies to each group except during meals, and school-age groups may hold up to 30.

When children from more than one age band share a room, New Jersey computes the ratio separately for each age group, to the nearest tenth, and any fraction over a whole number requires another staff member.

A room with four infants and seven toddlers, for instance, works out to one caregiver for the infants and two for the toddlers once the fraction over a whole number is covered.

Rest and sleep have their own, relaxed ratios: 1:10 for children under 18 months, 1:12 for children 18 months to 2½ years, and 1:20 for children 2½ and above.

One staff member must be physically in the nap room, and the center must still keep enough staff in the building to meet the awake ratios.

New Jersey counts only staff members who are at least 14 years old in its early childhood ratios.

Staff under 18 must be directly supervised by, and visible to, an adult staff member while they work.

Ratio headcounts are also separate from the head teacher and group teacher positions the rule requires: every New Jersey center must employ head teachers and/or group teachers scaled to its licensed capacity, and a center licensed for 61 to 120 children, for example, needs one head teacher and one group teacher.

A registered New Jersey family child care home cares for no fewer than three and no more than five children at a time, and up to three additional resident children under 6 may raise the total to eight.

New Jersey treats care of three to five children in the provider's home for at least 15 hours a week as a voluntary family child care registration under N.J.A.C. 3A:54, not a licensing requirement.

Without a second caregiver, a provider may have no more than three children under 1, or four children under 2 with no more than two of them under 1.

A home that cares for six or more children under 13 for less than 24 hours a day is a child care center that must be licensed, and the center ratio table above applies; children who live in the home are not counted toward that six-child threshold.

Take a center with a room of eight infants under 18 months, a room of twelve toddlers 18 months to 2½ years, and a room of twenty preschoolers 2½ to 4 years old.

At the awake ratios, the infant room needs eight children covered at 1:4, or two caregivers on the floor.

The toddler room needs twelve covered at 1:6, or two caregivers, and the preschool room needs twenty covered at 1:10, also two caregivers.

At rest time the same rooms compute to 1:10, 1:12 and 1:20, so one staff member can be physically present in each nap room, provided the center still keeps enough staff in the building to meet the awake ratios.

This is an illustration of how the numbers in the rule combine, not a staffing plan for any particular center: a real schedule depends on the center's licensed capacity, its rooms and its enrollment, and the head teacher and/or group teacher requirement scales with licensed capacity.