Low End and High End Salaries:

The salary for a Daycare Manager may be as low as $20,000 per year in some areas, although this is quite uncommon, and may only be for the first year until the employer has determined the viability of the manager and the skills that he or she possesses. However, there have been some reports of Daycare Manager salaries as high as $62,000 but this is also quite rare.

Here are some averages for the position of Daycare Facilities Manager in key locations around the country.

Chicago , Illinois : $24,009

Houston , Texas : $19,613

New York City/Manhattan, New York: $26,959

Dallas , Texas : $20,776

Phoenix , Arizona : $21,950

Atlanta , Georgia : $21,413

Indianapolis , Indiana : $22,005

Orlando , Florida : $22,674

Miami , Florida : $20,068

Overtime

While most salaried positions do not offer overtime, since you are expected to complete your tasks within the forty hours that you are at work. However, in certain situations there may be incentive pay and overtime offered by employers, and you may factor this in to your salary depending upon the exact facility that you will be managing, or the laws governing employment in your area.

Most of the time, the program that you will want to pursue in order to manage a daycare facility is the Associate of Science in Early Childhood Education. This major includes coursework in a variety of areas related to taking care of children and will give students a foundation for taking care of children from a wide variety of backgrounds and in different age categories. This is a two year program that provides students with skills and theories on teaching and caring for ages from infant to six years old including caring for very young children and building relationships with parents.

Coursework

Nutrition for Children: This will include the preparation of food, and nutritional requirements of children, and information that will allow daycare workers to avoid problems like allergic reactions and other medical problems that result from poor nutritional choices. This is an important part of any daycare center that provides one or more meals for children throughout the day, including how to feed children of different ages, and how to allow for customized meals because of diet, medical needs or religious requirements of the family.

Child Health: This will teach managers and workers in a daycare facility how to care for the physical health of children including naps, and how often they should be implemented or their duration. Also, exercise is a very important part of caring for children, and making sure that they get the proper amount is one of the skills you will learn. Also, caring for sick children will be taught including how to assess and treat colds and other common medical concerns like cuts, scrapes and bruises as well as how to ensure care in less common situations such as broken bones or other emergencies.

Child-Parent Relationships: Students will have to learn the dynamic between children and their parents in order to better serve them. They will learn how these relationships work and prepare themselves to work side-by-side with parents in order to provide the best care possible to their children. This is a vital skill for any child care facility worker to have, but even more important for a manager since they are usually the ones interacting with parents of enrolled children, or prospective parents considering the child care facility for their kids.

Behavior Modification Strategies :  No matter how well behaved children are, there will be times that they need behavior modification, and in certain cases, the child’s behavior may be extreme and need serious modification. Learning strategies that will work with different children and that parents will approve of will be some of the skills that prospective child care facility managers will learn, as well as how to supervise and maintain these strategies or how to improve them when necessary. This is one of the most important tasks of a child care facility manager and the caregivers that work there and personnel should be experts in a variety of behavior modification strategies.

Special Needs Instruction: Students may also need to have some skills in working with special needs children, and it is almost certain that any coursework for Early Childhood Education will include some special needs instruction. Although severe special needs children may have their own caregivers, there may be a need for managers and staff members of child care facilities to have at least a basic working knowledge in how to take care of anyone that requires special help. Also, this may help them in alerting parents to possible symptoms that may require to have their child evaluated for special needs instruction or medical concerns such as hyperactivity disorder.

Teaching Basic Skills: Obviously, any students who will be working with children that are preparing to enter school will need to teach basic skills such as reading and writing, and children that learn these basics from a provider in a child care facility may have an advantage when they do enter school. Learning how to teach these skills and nurture a child’s natural curiosity will be part of the skills that are learned in Early Childhood Education coursework, as well as strategies that will allow caregivers to work alongside educational programs and curriculum in public or private schools.  This will be a major emphasis on Associate Degree programs, but even moreso if the student is pursuing a Baccalaureate Degree.

First Aid/CPR: Part of the coursework that may be required is learning how to to perform emergency care such as first aid or CPR. This may require a separate course altogether, but sometimes it is included in the Associate Degree program, depending upon your school’s particular policies. This will ensure that caregivers can perform basic tasks like the Heimlich Maneuver, Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation and first aid, as well as know how to act in case of an emergency and when to call in paramedics or qualified medical personnel.

There may be additional certifications that are optional, but will help the prospective child care facility manager gain employment in the field, since various skills may be required to run the facility including business administration skills.

Child care is a huge business in today’s world, with both parents often working and a place for children too young to go to school or to be after school may be the perfect place to work. However, there are some qualifications that you’ll need to have in order to work in a day care or child care center, and especially if your goal is to manage one. Here is what you need to know about what kind of classes, certification and other education you need in order to have this career.

College Courses

Many colleges offer courses in Child Care. This may be a certificate or an associate degree program, and will require a certain amount of credit hours, and different courses depending upon which college or University that you are attending. However, most are very similar to the following.

Associate of Science in Early Childhood Education

This is a program for those interested in working in child care and is usually a two year degree program that will provide the student with an Associate Degree. The course usually offers skills and theories for teaching young children, including how to teach and care for infants all the way up to six years old. They will also learn how to build relationships with parents so that they can care for the children better.

Prerequisites For Degree Program

Most of the time in order to earn the Associates of Science in Childhood Education you need to have a High School Diploma, General Education Diploma (GED) or High School Equivalency Diploma (HSE). Also, there may be additional requirements such as meeting with a representative about the program, or a placement test before you begin the program.

Background Check

Some degree programs require a background check before you will be allowed to take them. Law Enforcement programs are a common example of this, and while you may not be required to pass a background check before you take the child care degree program, you will almost certainly have to pass one before you are employed by an agency or child care center. This is something that you should be aware of and talk to your counselor if you have any sort of criminal history.

Coursework

The students that study the child care associate degree program will not only attend classes to learn the principles and theories of child care but may also participate in student teaching to get experience in the real world. This may include coursework in the following areas.

Nutrition for children including preparing food and works best for different ages, as well as information on allergies and anything else related to nutrition that the care provider will have to know to be able to feed children of varying ages and backgrounds, or medical problems.

Child Health including exercise and fitness for children, as well as when and how often they should take naps, how much exercise they should have and also how to care for sick children, how to determine the severity of a potential health condition and how to treat common problems like cuts and scrapes as well as anything else that is related to the health of children.

Students will learn the dynamic between child and parent, and how relationships function so that they can be better prepared to work with both parent and child and provide the best care possible. This may include basic psychology, human interaction and child psychology.

Strategies for behavior modification. Students will learn the fundamentals of working with children and how to work to modify their behavior when they are not acting appropriately. There are different strategies that work best depending upon age and this is a very important aspect of child care that every provider should be an expert in .

Students will also learn how to teach and work with special needs children. Although more complicated strategies and skills are taught to those that specifically work special needs, care providers should be familiar with the fundamentals in case there is a need to care for one of these children.

Students will also learn the basics of reading and writing for children, so that they can begin to teach these skills and nurture them in the proper way, to work with educational programs and public or private school curriculum.

First Aid Certification:

This is an important certification for any child care provider to have. This will teach you the skills to respond to emergencies and be able to provide basic medical care for a child or adult including what to do in case of a poisoning, how to deal with a broken bone as well as how to care for a child who has sustained a head injury. This will also include CPR, which is different depending upon the age of the child and performing the Heimlich Maneuver if a child is choking. These courses may be including in the students degree program, or it may be required to get extra certification through classes offered in your local area. This will ensure you can care for a child in an emergency until paramedics or other medical professionals arrive.

Licensing

There may be licensing that you will have to obtain in order to be a care provider in your state. Many states require a license for various types of child care, and each one will have different requirements and needs. You should check with your college counselor if you plan to work in the same state that your school is in, or find someone at the Department of Health and Human Services to ask in the state you are planning to provide care in.

Additional Education Programs

While an Associates Degree is sufficient for most states to be able to manage a child care facility, there may be a need for additional education in some areas or in specific situations. In some schools additional degree programs are offered such as the Bachelor’s Degree in Early Childhood Education, or a Master’s Degree in Education.

Bachelor’s Program

The baccalaureate level of Early Childhood Education generally are reserved for those that are teaching in public or private schools, but managers of child care facilities may gain an advantage by getting their Bachelor’s Degree. Generally, this degree helps students develop their skills for teaching and working with children under the age of six or to prepare them for a career in elementary education or pre-school. There may be a specific emphasis on certain types of teaching such as math, reading, science or other subjects.

Students that are seeking their Bachelor’s Degree will be required to have a High School Diploma or the equivalent and may also need to have high enough scores in SAT or ACT standardized tests. Also, there may be other requirements such as purpose proposals or resumes. This degree will emphasize both mental and physical child development as well as classroom technology, child care assessment and observation and music as well as other subjects. It may also include skills needed to teach children who speak a language other than English to speak, read and write English.

Master’s Program

This is a professional child care program that will focus students to be able to advance in their industry as well as teach administrative skills. You need a Bachelor’s Degree in order to pursue this educational path and a certain GPA may be required, generally around 3.0 minimum. Also, you may be required to provide references and a resume. Coursework includes teach students that have trouble learning to read, the politics of education, how to be a leader in the educational field and very advanced teaching techniques. Generally, this program is far and above anything that is required for managing a child care facility and in fact, may result in the student not being able to procure that employment because of over qualification.

Other Programs of Study

Students may also want to consider pursuing other courses of study in addition to the education degree if they are seeking a management position in child care. For instance, being able to manage a business is a skill that is generally required for this position, and a minor in some sort of business administration program may be beneficial.  Other programs or courses may be helpful as well. Talk to your counselor for recommendations.

Since its inception, the USPS mail tracking systems have successfully tracked over 15 million pieces of direct mail advertising. Verifying the delivery status of your mail is now easy with USPS tracking system. This new USPS feature makes you save time by allowing the postal services to send your current delivery status on your mail. By using the new USPS Intelligent Mail Barcodes, anyone or any business can track the progress of its mail campaign just by using its own customer ID or account number. This tracking system is available in express mail, priority mail, priority mail international and global express guaranteed.

This tracking system allows you to choose from its two options, the email all activity to-date or email all future activity. The email all activity to-date is an option that provides a single email to each recipient containing the delivery status information. The email all future activity is another option that generates email any time that company receives a delivery or delivery related event. These delivery related events include refused, attempted, returned to sender, or forwarded mails.

USPS Bar Code

This 65-bar code is what the USPS had been using as a tracking system. The Intelligent Mail barcode is a USPS service offered for domestic mail delivery. This tracking system is here to provide functionality and efficient information than its predecessors POSTNET and PLANET. Also known as One Code Solution and $-State Customer Barcode (4CB, 4-CB or USPS4CB), this code effectively incorporated the routing ZIP code and mail tracking information which was included in previously used postal barcode standards.

This Intelligent Mail was introduced by the US Postal Services in 2003 and was used by the fall of 2009 for mailers to receive maximum USPS automation discount. This new system features an improved deliverability, new services and increased overall mail efficiency. The code contains four distinct symbols hence the name 4-State Customer Barcode that encodes up to 31 decimal digits of mail-piece data into 65 vertical bars which is shown through a window envelope.