Part Time Pricing and Policies?

[BBurris1]

I am a new provider. I've only been doing care about a month and have only offered full time positions priced weekly at $170 for infants, $150 for toddlers, $135 for preschool and $125 for school age. This is about average for my area.
I've had a lot of interest in part time positions, but of course, parents only want to pay part of the week then. I'd rather only have full time, but I need to get people in the door. I was thinking of doing a part-time contract priced at $40/day despite age and set days that the child would be here. (For example, every MWF instead of MT one week and TWF the next...) Is that a reasonable price and expectation? How do you handle part time children?

[Blackcat31]

Originally Posted by BBurris1

I am a new provider. I've only been doing care about a month and have only offered full time positions priced weekly at $170 for infants, $150 for toddlers, $135 for preschool and $125 for school age. This is about average for my area.
I've had a lot of interest in part time positions, but of course, parents only want to pay part of the week then. I'd rather only have full time, but I need to get people in the door. I was thinking of doing a part-time contract priced at $40/day despite age and set days that the child would be here. (For example, every MWF instead of MT one week and TWF the next...) Is that a reasonable price and expectation? How do you handle part time children?

I offer care on the following options:

5 days
4 days
3 SET days
3 VARYING days

The "approximate" costs work like this when broken down to daily rates:

5 days: $30 per day
4 days: $32 per day
3 SET days $35 per day
3 VARYING days: $40 per day


I have a lot more variables involved before a rate quote is provided (each rate is based on a lot of individual things) but for the most part, the more days per week a family uses the cheaper their daily rate is.


HTH

[Ariana]

I charge like this:
full day for 8 hours is $42
Full day for 8-10 hours is $48
half day up to 4 hours is $30

Parents choose if they want part-time based on hours or days. They also sign a contract with me for contracted days, hours and price.

With part-timers I find you HAVE to have set days otherwise you wouldn't be able to fill the other half of their spot. I can't have people coming willy nilly because of age restrictions. Basically if someone has contracted days of MWF you can also take another child for TTH kind of thing.

[Preschool/daycare teacher]

I agree with the others on not doing varying days. It's a big headache and they think they don't have to pay if the child isn't there since they have a different schedule each week. So one week they might be paying me $90, the next week might only be $30. You are also limited on how many children you can have at a time (I'm allowed five), so a varying day child would take a full time spot, but you'll get paid for just the days they were there. I have a varying day child right now and because I never know which days I'll have her, I can only take four other kids. OR you could charge the full time rate for a varying day child, but in my area there are too many other people willing to do "pay by the day" childcare so I wouldn't be able to do that if I wanted that family.
I have a full time rate (4-5 days/week), a three days/week rate, and a two days/week rate. Basically the part timers pay per day and I just multiply it by how many days they need, to get their weekly rate.