15 Questions to Ask a Daycare Director (and What the Answers Mean)

Staffing — where quality is decided

• 1. "What's your staff turnover been in the last year?" — The honest answer is a number. Child care turnover is high industry-wide, so you're not looking for zero; you're looking for a director who knows the number and can explain it.
• 2. "How long have my child's specific caregivers been here?" — Continuity in the room your child will live in matters more than the facility average.
• 3. "What happens when a teacher calls in sick?" — The good answer involves named floaters or subs and never involves quietly running over ratio.
• 4. "What training do staff get, and how often?" — Listen for CPR/first aid currency, safe sleep, and anything beyond the state minimum.
• 5. "Are background checks completed before staff start?" — The only acceptable answer is yes.

Daily operations

• 6. "Walk me through drop-off and pickup security." — Who can collect a child, how the list is enforced, what ID gets checked.
• 7. "How do you handle discipline?" — You want redirection and positive guidance, described concretely. Any hint of physical punishment or humiliation ends the conversation.
• 8. "What's your sick policy — both directions?" — When must you keep your child home, and when do they send children home. Firm, specific policies protect everyone.
• 9. "How will I know what my child's day was like?" — Apps, daily sheets, photos at pickup — the medium matters less than whether communication is systematic.
• 10. "Can I drop in unannounced?" — Licensed facilities must generally allow custodial parents access during operating hours. Hesitation here is a red flag with few innocent explanations.

The hard ones — ask them anyway

• 11. "I read your inspection history — can you tell me about [specific finding]?" — You learn two things: what happened, and how the facility handles accountability. Defensiveness answers the second question badly. Look the facility up before you go.
• 12. "How do you notify parents about incidents and injuries?" — The professional standard is a written incident report the same day, plus a call for anything beyond trivial. Get the threshold in writing.
• 13. "When were you last over ratio, and what did you do?" — An honest director has a real answer; "we're never over ratio" from a large facility strains belief.
• 14. "What's your emergency plan — fire, lockdown, severe weather — and when did you last drill it?" — Drills should be recent and routine, including in infant rooms.
• 15. "Why did the last family who left choose to leave?" — An unexpectedly revealing question about self-awareness and candor.

Reading the whole interview

No single answer decides it. What you're assessing is a posture: specific over vague, systems over improvisation, candor over spin. A director who says "good question — here's exactly how we handle that" fifteen times is running the kind of facility that produces the clean inspection records you checked before the visit.