Guide
Ratio tables decide your real capacity, your real tuition, and half of all inspection citations. Here is how to read one.
A ratio is written 1:4 and read "one adult for every four children of this age." Three things about ratios confuse every beginner, and all three cost money.
In mixed-age home care, most states apply the ratio of the youngest child present to the whole group, or cap infants separately and let the total ride. Pennsylvania spells the family-home scale out: infants 1:4, young toddlers 1:5, older toddlers 1:6, preschool 1:10 — and when ages mix, the youngest child's ratio governs. One infant in a Pennsylvania home does not just take a seat; she reprices every seat.
Licensed capacity counts the provider's own young children in most states — Illinois counts your under-12s, Florida your under-13s, California your under-10s. A license "for 8" with two young children of your own is a license to sell 6 seats. Providers who miss this over-enroll on paper before they ever open.
Your category cap (say, 12 in a Texas registered home) is the ceiling on heads. Ratios are a second, lower ceiling that moves with the age mix: Texas itself warns that one infant in a registered home pulls the practical cap from 12 toward 10. Your legal enrollment on any given day is the lower of the two — and your break-even tuition (the kit's math module works this in full) must be computed on the lower number, not the license on the wall.
Because ratio violations are visible in one glance at a sign-in sheet. Keep attendance by age group, not just by name, and the sheet itself becomes your defense. When in doubt, staff to the strictest reading: a ratio citation is the one that follows a program from inspection to inspection.
Every rule in this guide bends by state. Run your facts through the free checker and read your verdict with its citations.