Childcare and early learning centers
Ratios held, clearances current, rooms open
We fix childcare staffing and compliance processes so you can hire teachers faster, keep every clearance and training hour current, and stop closing rooms for lack of staff. We do the work, then leave it running.
Sound familiar?
One missing teacher closes a classroom
- “We have families on the waitlist and an empty room, because we can’t hire enough teachers to meet ratio.”
- “A new hire can’t be alone with children until her clearance comes back, and that takes weeks.”
- “Every licensing visit, we scramble to find training certificates in three different binders.”
- “New families wait to enroll because the paperwork keeps bouncing back.”
In most centers, the director is the recruiter, the enrollment office, the compliance officer and a substitute in the toddler room. None of this is a failure of effort. It’s a process no one has had time to fix.
Where we start
The offices childcare centers ask for most
People Office
Hiring, onboarding and retention for lead and assistant teachers. We shorten the path from application to first day in the classroom, and find out why people leave.
Days to hireOffer acceptanceFirst-year turnover
Compliance Office
Background checks and clearances, required training hours, health and safety certifications, and licensing files, kept current every day of the year.
Credentials currentLapses caught before auditAudit findings
Operations Office
Enrollment and intake, waitlists and scheduling, so families start sooner and staffing matches the rooms you can fill.
Time to serveIncomplete filesRework
Funding Office
Grants and the reports that come with them, so money you’ve earned doesn’t go unclaimed.
Late reportsUnclaimed reimbursements
Buying from us
A fixed fee and a short scope, decided by you
Center owners and directors usually decide on their own, and quickly. You get a fixed fee, agreed up front, a short written scope and a start date. Centers run by a nonprofit can often ask a funder to cover the work as capacity building.
Many centers come to us for a moment: a licensing visit on the calendar, a hiring push before fall enrollment, a new classroom about to open. We’re built for those.
What we bring
Hiring know-how from one of the nation’s largest school districts
Edwine Michel, our founder, served as Director of Recruitment and Retention in the nation’s 10th-largest school district, where new hires needed clearances and credentials before working with children. There he led a Lean Six Sigma hiring project targeting 10 days or less to fill a role.
Lean Six Sigma is a set of methods for removing waste and errors from a process. We pair it with design thinking and business analytics, chosen to fit the problem. For a center, that usually means one clear path from application to cleared and trained, and one place where every clearance and training hour is tracked. Our methods →
How we’d start
Two weeks to find where your staffing gets stuck
Diagnose takes about two weeks. We use your own hiring, clearance, training and enrollment records to show where the work breaks and what it costs in dollars and hours. Fix runs 4 to 12 weeks, and we do the work: clear the file backlog, redesign the hiring steps, set up tracking that tells you before a clearance or training requirement lapses. With Sustain, your staff carry it with simple procedures, or we match you with a vetted specialist and stay on as the quality check with a monthly scorecard.
Common questions
Questions from childcare and early learning centers
We’re a single center. Is this for us?
Yes. Single centers often feel the pressure most, because the director carries every role. Diagnose is scoped to your size, and the fee is fixed before we start.
Can you get us ready for a licensing visit?
Yes. The Compliance Office gathers every clearance, training record and certification into one place, finds the gaps and closes them, and sets up tracking so you’re ready any day of the year.
Do you supply teachers or substitutes?
No, we’re not a staffing agency. We fix your hiring process so you fill roles faster through your own pipeline and keep more of the teachers you hire.
Do you know our state’s licensing rules?
Requirements differ by state, and we work from your state’s current rules and your licensing reports. We confirm the specific ratio, clearance and training requirements with you during Diagnose, before we change anything.
How do you handle staff and family records?
We use secure, modern tools, including AI, under our team’s direct supervision. Your information is never used to train anyone’s models, and we’ll walk you through exactly how we handle it.
Tell us which room you can’t open.
In 30 minutes we’ll tell you honestly whether we can help, and what a diagnostic would show.
