Tuition rate calculator
Rate-setting by looking at the program down the road is how a room runs at a loss for a year. Start from what the room costs, divide by the children who are actually in it, and the number comes out on its own.
Occupancy is the number that moves this most. A room budgeted at 100% and running at 80% loses the difference straight off the margin.
Rent, utilities, insurance, admin and food, this room's share
Rate this room has to charge
$186.69
per child per week at 14 of 16 filled
- Break-even rate
- $164.29
- Weekly room cost
- $2,300
- Weekly revenue at target
- $2,614
- Weekly margin
- $314
- Rate if the room fills
- $163.35
Occupancy is the whole game
A sixteen-place room budgeted full and running at thirteen has lost nineteen percent of its revenue while every cost stayed exactly where it was. There is no expense line you can cut fast enough to cover that, because the largest one is a teacher who has to be in the room whether it holds thirteen children or sixteen.
Set the rate on realistic occupancy, not licensed capacity. If your rooms run at 85% across the year, price at 85% and treat a full room as upside rather than as the plan.
The empty seat is not free
Ratio is a step function. Going from ten to eleven preschoolers at 1:10 adds a whole teacher, not a tenth of one. The seat after a ratio break costs far more than the one before it — which is why the last seat in a room is often worth discounting to fill and the first seat over the break is not.
What belongs in the room's cost
Labor first: teachers in the room, plus their share of the floater, the break cover and the director's time. Then the room's share of rent, utilities, insurance, food, supplies, software and admin — allocated by square footage or by places, but allocated consistently across every room.
The mistake that flatters a rate is leaving overhead in a single central pot and pricing rooms on labor alone. Every room then looks profitable and the program still loses money.
Raising a rate without emptying the room
Give notice in writing, well ahead — most families accept an increase they can plan for and few accept one that arrives with the invoice. Raise on a date, not a rolling anniversary, so the whole program moves together.
Raise the youngest rooms hardest if that is where your cost is. Infant care is where ratio bites, and a program that flattens rates across ages is subsidizing infants out of preschool tuition, whether or not it knows it.
Sources
- BLS OOH — Childcare Workersfetched 2026-09-04
- DOL Women's Bureau — National Database of Childcare Pricesfetched 2026-09-04