As parents of young children ourselves, we had a lot of these same frustrations and agonized over the decision on which daycare to choose. We talked to our friends and asked them if they were happy with their daycare facilities, we talked to coworkers and asked them, we researched as much as we could on the Internet, and interviewed several daycare facilities.

In our travels we learned certain things to look for when choosing a new daycare, which I will share with you here. Think of this as a starting point when interviewing possible daycare facilities.

• Create a list of questions to take with you when you go in to talk to the daycare staff during your interview.  It’s really easy to forget things when you are face to face with the daycare staff and a list really helps in remembering what you feel is important to ask.
• Take extra paper with you to write the answers to the questions from your list down.  When you get home, chances are you will forget the answers you received.  If you are interviewing multiple daycares (don’t just interview one!), you will probably forget what everybody said and keeping notes is a good way to remember and compare daycare facilities.
• Be sure to have questions ready for who would potentially be your child’s primary care teacher.  Your child will be spending a lot of time with this person, so you want to make sure that your child will get along with this person.  Watch how they interact with the other children in their group.  Do they sit down and play with the children or are they sitting down somewhere ignoring the children?  Do the children seem happy with this person or do they shy away from them?
• In what shape are the toys and equipment?  Are they clean and in good repair?
• In what shape is the facility?  Is the facility clean?  Does the staff keep the facility in good order and there’s nothing that could potentially hurt a child?
• How is the facilities security?  Do they have a plan in place to make sure kids don’t wander off, or that people can’t wander off with the wrong children?  Do staff pay attention to people coming and going to the facility? 
• What happens in the case of an emergency at the daycare facility?  For instance, if there is a fire nearby, or an earthquake, what is the procedure at the school?  Does the school have emergency supplies available in case the children need to stay at the facility for any length of time?  What happens during a lock down, and what would cause a lock down to happen at the school?
• What is the student to teacher ratio in your child’s class?  The lower the number, the more attention will be paid to your child. 
• What is the education requirements for your child’s teachers?  Do they have any special certifications?  Are they trained in emergency procedures like CPR?
• This one we never thought of asking, but after being in a daycare for awhile, I think this one would be a good one to ask as well:  Are there any extra costs involved that are not part of their general “tuition”.  Our daycare charges extra for “event” charges whether anything is going on at the daycare or not and is usually a minimum of $5 a month.  For instance, periodically the daycare will hire a bouncey for the kids to play in, so we get a $5 extra charge, or the kids have a “snow-day”, so this is a $5 charge.  What really chapped my hide was a $5 charge for “staff appreciation day”.  $5 isn’t much, but if they have several of these events in a month, it could add another $20 or $30 to your bill.

Hopefully this gives you a good starting point to help you on your daycare search.  I’d be interested to hear from other parents and see what other items you think would be important to think about when looking for a new daycare for children.  And remember, a good place to start looking for your new daycare is right here!  We started this website after becoming frustrated with the complete lack of information on the Internet and feel very proud with the amount of people coming to visit.