Every room, every hour.
In ratio.

From the front door to the file Licensing asks for.

Every area below exists because a section of Chapter 746 requires it.

Ratios and group size, live

Two tests at once, all day: the caregiver-to-child ratio for each age group and the maximum group size that applies with it. Activity-aware, with the lawful exceptions built in rather than bolted on: mixed-age grouping, the opening and closing hour where one caregiver may hold sixteen children but never a child under eighteen months, and the tighter rule the moment a group is in water.

Sign-in, sign-out and release

Attendance is the record everything else leans on, so it carries the fields the rule prescribes and a durable identifier for each parent. It feeds the ratio engine as children arrive and the evacuation roster if the building has to empty. Authorized pick-up is a first-class list, not a note in a file.

Enrollment and the people around a child

The admission information the parent completes, who may collect the child, who to call, and the emergency care plan for a child who has one. A child is enrolled here, not placed: no admission assessment, no discharge planning, no length of stay.

Immunizations and health records

Immunization status tracked against the rule that requires it, with the records the centre has to be able to produce. Tuberculosis and vision and hearing screening are deliberately absent: those requirements were repealed, and building them would make a centre chase paperwork the state no longer asks for.

Medication, authorized by the parent

A childcare medication log is not a clinical one. Authorization comes from the parent rather than a prescriber, and the log also has to hold unassigned stock medication, which is how a centre lawfully keeps epinephrine that is not assigned to one named child.

Incidents and illness

The state prescribes the form, the parent signature and where the record is filed. The product follows that shape instead of a generic incident report, and keeps the copy the parent signed.

Rooms, age groups and moving up

Classrooms, age bands, operating hours and licensed capacity. Children age into the next room, and the ratio that applies to them changes when they do.

Staff records, training and the director

Personnel files, background checks, and professional development hours tracked against the requirement rather than totalled at renewal. Directors qualify under their own rule, which is where the Day Care Administrator’s Credential comes in.

Policies, inspections and the audit trail

Written operational policies with signed acknowledgments, fire and gas inspection records with their own reminders, and an audit entry behind every change, because Licensing may look at electronic records without notice.

Food service, transport and water

The nutrition requirements that bridge into CACFP if the centre participates, child safety seats and the electronic child safety alarm on a vehicle, and the water-activity rules, which are the densest cluster of high-risk requirements in the whole chapter.

Parents see their own child

Daily reports, enrollment and billing in the parents’ hands. Note what is deliberately missing: no visit log. A parent may visit at any time without prior approval, and building a visitor approval flow would quietly work against that right.