The new academic year is here, is your childcare facility ready for the influx of children? Getting ready for the new academic year is of the utmost importance as it will influence the success of your child care program. 

We want your child care facility to be ready and waiting for children to flood through your doors when the academic year begins. Preparing for the new year well in advance is required to guarantee quality child care.

Today, we’re going to go over some of our best tips for child care facilities to prepare for the new academic year. 

1. Create Processes to Stay Organized

Staying organized is vitally important for child care facilities. An unorganized child care facility may struggle to keep up, while an organized one can stand the test of time, especially in the digital era. How can you get your child care facility organized?

One of the best ways to organize and streamline your child care facility is to switch to digital solutions to handle the majority of the administrative work. The right solution will take that a step further and allow for billing, parent engagement, and even provide real-time updates.

A digitized child care facility is prepared to safely store all of the documents that keep them in compliance. Whether you need to find a waiver, emergency contacts, or the parent’s phone number, having all of your information in one place will streamline the day-to-day workflow of the facility.

Once digitized, it’s simply a matter of informing parents of the changes in your processes. They’ll be pleased by all the new features you can offer them to help keep them aware of how their child is doing. 

2. Develop Classroom Management Policies

Every classroom in your facility should be designed to provide children with an enriching experience. Creating policies that dictate classroom management throughout your facility will ensure that every educator is providing the same enriching experience.

Your specific classroom management policies will be unique to your facility, but they should all cover a few specific topics:

• Behavior: Every child should be aware of how they are expected to behave while they’re in your facility. Additionally, there should be a disciplinary system in place that is applied universally. A common tool is a green/yellow/red chart that tracks behavior, providing rewards for excellent behavior.
• Seating: Even if you don’t plan on having children stay seated very often, seating should be assigned on day one. Every child should know where to go when they’re told to sit down. 
• Storage: Cubbies are a timeless feature found in child care facilities, and that’s for good reason: they provide excellent storage for children. Give each child a labeled cubby, and maybe a hook on the wall, for storing their backpack and anything else they might bring.

Work with all of the educators in your facility to create classroom management policies that can be universally applied.

If you’ve embraced a digital child care management solution, then it may be used to track child progress, notate milestones, and access any necessary information that might arise during the course of the day, such as allergies or emergency contacts.

3. Reach Out to Families

One of the best things you can do to prepare for the new academic year is to reach out to families a few weeks beforehand. If you’ve digitized your child care facility, then you will need to teach them about the new way that your facility is operating. Every parent should be aware of any process changes that have arisen during the summer.

Ideally, you’ll be reaching out to families to inform them that you’re switching to a digital child care management solution. Make sure to present this information with most of the focus being on the value that it provides to the parents:

• Ability to view significant milestones and overall progress of their child
• Receive updates and photos every day
• Automatic billing, complete with reminders and notifications
• Increased security for sensitive information
• Online payments are now enabled

Informing parents of new changes will help decrease or eliminate first-day confusion that may happen otherwise. Instead, they’ll show up ready to embrace the new processes and procedures that you’ve created.

Preparation Means Success

If you truly want to provide children with a meaningful experience, as well as provide value to their parents, then you must prepare for the new academic year. Reaching out to families, ironing out classroom management policies, and creating organizational processes will spell out success for the upcoming academic year.

Are you looking to start the year off right? Book your KinderPass demo today and see how we’re helping daycares stay organized and agile.