This is my first post! I have been lurking on this site for a while but I am really struggling with a question that I know some one on this board will have some insight on.

I currently have 2 part time kids (7 & 4) and will be taking on 2 more part time kids this school year (4YO twins). When they started with me over 2 years ago, neither of the PT kids was in school so I set me rate as a day rate (9 hr) and a half day (5 or less) rate that seemed to work well for us. Now that the older one is going into 2nd grade and the younger child is starting 4K, I am effectively doing after school care for about $40/week for the older child. In essence, the older they get the more my pay goes down and I can't take on any more children because of the state laws. How do you handle PT after school care rates? I checked into what the "after school" program at the school charges and it is more than twice what they are paying me with much higher ratios.

The 4K program is a half day program so my half day rates will work for this school year for her, but when she enters full-time kinde next year, I will be down to $80/week for the 2 of them. The twins will be in a similar situation as they are going to be in 4K this year as well. Do I plan to term them all the following school year and start from scratch? Do I start charging a minimum rate no matter how many hours?

Please help! I am new to dealing with this type of situation and appreciate any wisdom you can lend me. Thanks!

Sara

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If they are not attending full-time, why can't you take on more kids?

It is hard to give an accurate answer without understanding your regs...

Here I can have 6 full-time PLUS 2 before/after school kids for up to two, one hour periods per day. When school is out, parents have to find back-up care.

Is it similar there?

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Our regs are 6 full timers and 4 school age children. The thing that throws me off is that this is for the school year only. It's ok for school vacation, but not summer vacation.

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I can have up to 4 kids that are not my own at any time during the day. So if I have them for after school, any additional kids would have to be gone by the time they get off the bus at 3. Not exactly an easy spot to fill, and understandably makes it very hard for parents to get after school care at in-home type daycares.

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At least you get that.... Here if school is even closed for emergency weather, they can't come here unless I have an absense.

That is why I don't offer it.

It ends up being more stress than it is worth because parents get upset that I won't "risk it for them" by going over ratio during school breaks, holidays and vacations.

Sure, the chance is slim, but it is not worth it for me, IYKWIM?

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That's the way it is here too. My own kids don't count in my ratios if they are in school full time. For snow days and teacher days they also don't count. But summers they do. Now for paying kids, they count any time they are on my property. I just can't do it either. They fill FT spot for a 1/4 of the price.

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Ouch....

If you get registered/licensed will your ratios go up?

If not I don't know how you can afford to continue that.

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This is also my case. I have can have 3 kids year round that are not my own, 2 more during the school year. I can't apply for my 6+2 license for 2 more years. It's a minimum of 3 years licensed before we can move up. No you don't make a lot of money and it makes it almost impossible to stay afloat until you hit that mark unless you have no children of your own.

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If I was licensed my ratios would go up so that I could have as many as 8, but we are doing OK on what I am bringing in now so I don't really want to go through the hassle of being licensed. I am following the published guidelines as much as possible anyway. I had 1 full time and 2 part time kids until this past June when the full time kid developed severe allergies and needed to be kept in a more "sterile" environment. Things have been tight the last few months but we have been managing.

I changed my pay structure slightly, going from daily to hourly because the DCD was taking advantage of me and leaving the kids here as much as possible. But now that I am charging them hourly he is dropping them off late and and picking them up early so he can short me as much money as possible. Real piece of work. DCM is fine, just the DCD is the one who writes the checks. So, I have decided to change things AGAIN now that hours will be changing with school starting next month and outline things a lot more clearly. I am trying to figure out how to structure things for the time being and this after school thing is giving me fits. Don't want to tell them to go else where, but I can't survive on what I will be making for the 2012-13 school year if things keep going this way. ugh.

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So, how many afternoon hours will they be there for next year?

I charge $60 per child, per week for afternoons, and I only have them for 1-3 hours. I definitely think you're hurting yourself by charging hourly.

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I love your forum name! I'm not sure I understand exactly what you're asking, so if I'm off, let me know. I don't know where you're from, to know what your ratios might be (the maximum number of children you can have at one time), but here we can have up to 12 children (class 1 home daycare), or 16 (class 2 home daycare) and up to 3 school agers before/after school and on school breaks (summers they couldn't come unless we had an opening). So before/after school we can have 3 extras without counting in our ratios. If you have to count them, I'm thinking it's only hurting you to have after school. As for the children going to 4K (is that like preschool?) we charge a daily rate for part timers (less than 4 days a week), so even if they go to preschool outside of our's for half a day, they still pay the same rate since they're here during some part of the day. I would recommend charging your 4k familes the same as an all day child. It's not likely you can fill their spot just for that little bit of time they're gone. Each child that comes during the day is taking a "spot", so you have daily "spots" for part timers. They can choose to come half a day, or a full day, but the rate is the same. Something else maybe you could do, is offer preschool classes however many days a week you have children going to 4K. Their preschool hours/days would be during the time the 4kers aren't there. Then you could share those spots. But I don't know if preschool is something you'd want to do. You would definitely have to be strict on their scheduled hours. Neither of those kids sharing the one spot could come even a little early, or leave just a little late since that'd put you over ratio. But as long as you stick to your polices for them and don't budge, I don't think it'd be a problem.
Did that make any sense? It's late and I'm a bit fuzzy minded

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For the 4K kids (yes, 4K is public preschool from 7:45AM to 10:30 AM, Tues thru Fri), I will get them off the bus around 11, feed them lunch etc and they will go home around 5, so essentially they are PT. The almost 2nd grader I have from 3 to 5 Tues thru Friday so $40 a week is what I am looking at for the school year with her (and she is my biggest behavior problem). For the family with 4K and 2nd grader this equates to $160/week by my current rate schedule of $5/hr/kid.

Would it be reasonable to change my rates to weekly and charge slightly more? I made $170/week for the previous school year and they decided to re-arrange their schedule so the girls would be here fewer hours this year. Is it reasonable to keep the same rate on a weekly basis? They also did not pay for any days the kids were not here (including holidays) and I am changing that policy as well with the new contract and limiting them to 1 week of unpaid time during the school year. (They have already taken 4 weeks of unpaid time this summer with very little notice and my wallet is getting very dusty).

I am probably making this more complicated than it needs to be, but this is my first time with formal contracts as a provider (bad, I know, but better late than never!)

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What is your full time rate (If they came all day, 5 days a week)? I would definitely change to weekly rates. If you want to change their contract so that they pay even when they aren't there, I would think you would almost have to switch to weekly rates. Otherwise they just look at it as hourly (pay as you go) care. We have a part time daily rate (which translates into a weekly rate once their contracted days are set for each week), full time rate, and school age rates. NO more hourly rates. That was just a mess and asking for parents to think they didn't have to pay as much if they came early or dropped off later than they were scheduled that day. If you want to be able to count on a consistant income each week, the weekly rate sounds like the best route.

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This has become an even bigger mess than I thought. Met with one of the DCM's tonight and told her about going from a daily/hourly rate to a flat weekly rate with paid holidays and no vacation time. She was not happy, obviously, since this is not what she is used to. After talking about it for a while, I agreed to "bank" any hours that they pay for but do not use such as if their kid is sick, vacation, etc. to be used in place of paying me overtime money for days off of school when I would have them more hours. Means more work on my end, but I think I can make do. This would be a one time thing as this is the only school year I will have these kids. After that they do not do summer care and then will be going to after school care at the school once they are in school full time kindergarten.

Now I have to rewrite all my policies that I just finished. Grrrrr.... The good news is that I stood firm on my paid vacation days.

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