Staffing a new childcare center: who to hire first and when

Sequence matters more at a new center than at an established one, because a young roster has no bench to absorb a mis-hire.

Hire the director first, the lead teachers for your opening rooms second, and everyone else after that.

The director is the hire that makes every other hire easier: they screen and interview the leads, build schedules against your ratios, set up the classrooms, and carry the operational side of an opening, from family tours to the paperwork your licensing agency asks for.

A center that opens with teachers but no stable leadership inherits those jobs itself.

Write the director posting before anything else, and confirm what your state child care licensing agency requires a director to hold before you write it — qualifications for the role are set state by state, and give this search the longest runway on your calendar.

Our guide to hiring a director covers the role's scope, what to screen for and how the pay conversation works.

Next, lead teachers — and only for the rooms you will actually open on day one.

Your floor plan may show eight classrooms; staffing follows enrollment, not the blueprint.

Each room in your first phase needs a lead plus whatever second-adult coverage your state's staff-to-child ratios and group-size rules call for in that age band, and those numbers are the licensing agency's, not yours to estimate.

Ask your licensing consultant which of your roles count toward ratio before you fill the second slot — a support hire may not buy a room coverage, and that changes who you post.

After the leads: assistants and aides for those same rooms, then the coverage roles — a floater, front-desk or enrollment help, a cook if you serve meals — hired against the schedule you will actually run rather than a generic org chart.

Substitutes belong on the first roster too, planned in from the start instead of patched in after the first staff absence.

The hiring motion itself — planning each role, writing and posting the job, screening, working interviews, offers, onboarding — is the territory of our guide to how to hire childcare staff; this page stays on who comes first and by when.

Confirm before you post: director and lead-teacher qualifications, and which roles count toward ratio, are set by your state child care licensing agency.

Pull the current rules from the agency before you write any posting.

Work backward from two dates: the pre-licensing inspection and your first day of enrollment.

Nothing on the staffing side is instant — the director search deserves the longest runway, background checks take real calendar time, and your state's pre-service training requirement needs a slot on the same calendar.

The licensing application and inspection sequence itself is the territory of our guide to opening a center; ask your state child care licensing agency for its current application-to-license sequence in writing and build your hiring calendar off that, not off a blog timeline (including this one).

Start the background checks as soon as offers go out — they are a step that can run longer than you planned.

Caring for Our Children Basics, the national health-and-safety baseline standards published on ACF's child care technical assistance site (July 2025), says staff should be screened on employment and re-screened at least every 5 years, that checks should be completed within 45 days, and that staff may begin only after a qualifying FBI or in-state fingerprint result, while supervised by a fully cleared staff member.

What your state requires and how long its pipeline actually takes is a question for your licensing agency and your check provider — our employer's guide to the background-check process walks the steps.

There is a federal floor under that start-date question.

Under the CCDF background-check rule (45 CFR 98.43(d)(4)), a new hire may begin work after a qualifying result on either the FBI fingerprint check or the in-state fingerprint check — but until every component clears, that person must be supervised at all times by someone with a qualifying background check.

That is the federal rule, not necessarily your state's whole rule: confirm the process your state child care licensing agency uses before you put any start date on the calendar.

Run credential verification in the same window as the checks, not after them.

A lead who interviews well but cannot document the credential your state requires for the room — a degree, a CDA, a registry record — is a start date that slips, and a phased opening has no slack in it.

Check the paperwork while the fingerprints are processing, so an offer becomes a start date instead of a stall.

Confirm before you count on a date: background-check components and timelines, credential requirements and pre-service training are set by your state child care licensing agency.

Confirm each one with the agency before you publish an opening date or schedule a start.

Open with fewer rooms than your license allows and add staff as enrollment fills them.

Phasing turns one big hiring bet into a sequence of smaller ones: each room you add triggers its own lead-plus-coverage hire, tied to the enrollment that requires it.

Anchor each hire to a milestone — a waitlist threshold on a room, for example — rather than to a date on the calendar, so payroll never runs ahead of the children it exists for.

The coverage layer matters more in a phased opening, because each open room runs on a thin bench.

Recruit substitutes before opening day, not after the first absence — a substitute you have already screened and oriented is the difference between covering a room and running a short one.

If you fill gaps through a staffing agency or a contracted sub service instead, budget the screening into that decision: under the CCDF background-check rules, the definition of a child care staff member covers anyone a provider employs for compensation, including contract employees and self-employed individuals — which is why staffing-agency temps and contracted substitutes need the same checks as your direct hires.

Two pipeline programs can pad a phased roster.

Federal Work-Study is one: the rules that govern the program (34 CFR 675.2) name child care — including campus child care open to the community — among the "community services" the program funds, and colleges must spend at least 7 percent of their Work-Study allocations on community-service jobs.

A center near a campus can therefore ask the financial aid office about Work-Study placements.

Read the fine print if your center is for-profit: up to 25 percent of Work-Study funds can pay students working at private for-profit employers, and the work must be academically relevant to the student's program to the maximum extent practicable — which is why a for-profit center usually only qualifies for ECE majors (34 CFR 675.23).

Treat Work-Study students as extra hands and a future-hire pipeline rather than a coverage plan, and remember that the staff-member definition above covers anyone the center employs for compensation — a paid Work-Study student included.

The second pipeline is the one you grow yourself: apprentices and trainees who join before a room opens and learn your program while they earn their hours.

That is the training question the next section takes up.

Opening day is a training deadline.

Every person on the roster needs your orientation — policies, curriculum, schedules, emergency procedures, the family handbook — plus whatever pre-service training your state child care licensing agency requires before staff work with children.

Training requirements are set state by state, so confirm the current requirement for each role with the agency and put it on the pre-opening calendar next to the background checks; a hire who clears everything else but the training is a start date that slips anyway.

If your opening roster skews less experienced, a registered apprenticeship turns the training period into structure.

The U.S. Department of Labor's standards for registered programs (29 CFR 29.5) require a term measured by at least 2,000 hours of on-the-job learning, demonstrated competency, or a hybrid of the two; a recommended minimum of 144 hours of related instruction per year; and a progressively increasing wage schedule starting at no less than the FLSA minimum wage.

Registered programs must also set a numeric apprentice-to-journeyworker ratio consistent with proper supervision, review performance periodically, and provide safe training facilities — a shape that fits a classroom naturally, where supervision is already the job.

Apprenticeship.gov lists "Early Childhood Educator" and "Early Childhood/PRE-K Teacher" among its education-sector apprenticeship occupations; ask your state apprenticeship agency what exists near you before you build a program from scratch.

T.E.A.C.H.

Early Childhood scholarships are the other structure worth knowing before you hire.

The model is cost-shared: it pays most of tuition, books and travel; it often requires paid release time from the sponsoring employer; it awards a bonus or raise when the recipient completes credit hours; and it requires the recipient to stay with the sponsoring program for a set period.

For a new center the model cuts both ways: the commitment clause can help hold an early hire through the fragile first years, but the sponsor-side pieces — paid release time is often one — are obligations your budget carries, and they vary by state program.

The T.E.A.C.H.

National Center's directory (October 2026) lists programs in 21 states, so check the directory for yours before you count on the funding in any offer you extend.

Sequence training the same way you sequence checks: confirm the state's requirement for each role, build orientation so it finishes before the first day of enrollment, and keep the completion records with your licensing paperwork so the roster you field matches the one you filed.

This page is employer information, not licensing or legal advice. Staffing requirements, staff-to-child ratios, background checks and training requirements for centers are set and enforced by your state child care licensing agency — confirm the current rules there before you hire, schedule or open.