Childcare Landscape Study - Flipbook - Page 45
Davidson County Child Care Landscape Study Results
3
Further, child care shortages also often disproportionately impact families that do not identify
as White, families with low and middle income levels, and families with infants and
toddlers.12 Importantly, child care desert estimates rely on state licensing data as a proxy for
available care, which often overstate the number of slots programs can actually make
available to families, given program staffing and the age of children served.13
Publicly available state licensing data provide an important starting point for understanding
child care supply in greater Davidson County.14 However, licensing data describe the
maximum number of children programs are authorized to serve and often do not capture
how child care programs operate in practice, including important nuances related to the
exact number or type (e.g. infant, certificate-accepting) of child care slots actually available
to families.15 Programs may operate below licensed capacity, allocate slots differently
across age groups, or vary in how many slots they make available to families using child
care certificates. As a result, licensing data alone provide an incomplete measure of the child
care supply families can realistically access when looking for care.
By presenting data collected from child care directors on actual child enrollment, open slots,
and other key measures of child care supply at child care centers across the region, the
following findings build a more complete understanding of child care supply in greater
Davidson County.
Greater Davidson County Child Care Centers Have 22,184 Slots
For Children Ages Birth to 5 Years Old
In the Child Care Provider Survey, we asked child care center directors to report the number of
children currently enrolled and the number of slots that are currently open in their program
today. Using these survey responses, we estimate that across the 246 centers in greater Davidson
County, 19,183 full-day equivalent child care slots are occupied by children under age 5, with
the vast majority of slots filled by children who are enrolled in full-time care (see Figure 1).
Figure 1: Greater Davidson County Center-Based Child Care Supply
Total Occupied Slots
(Full-Time Only)
Total Open Slots
(Full-Time Only)
Full-Day
Actual Capacity
Infants
1,816 (1,694)
304 (259)
2,120
Toddlers
5,890 (5,145)
789 (661)
6,679
Preschool
11,477 (10,116)
1,908 (1,645)
13,385
Total
19,183 (16,955)
3,001 (2,565)
22,184
Child Age
Source: Davidson County Child Care Provider Experience Survey. The Prenatal-to-3 Policy Impact Center, 2025. Note: Results were
extrapolated to represent the estimated full population of available slots across greater Davidson County’s 246 child care centers. All
values are reported as full-day equivalent slots. Full-time enrollment counts as one full-day slot per child. Part-time enrollment is
converted to full-day equivalents, with two part-time children counted as one full-day slot. For example, 244 part-time infants are
enrolled in centers across greater Davidson County, occupying 122 full-day child care slots. Slots allocated to part-time care can be
derived by subtracting the number of full-time only slots from the total number of occupied or open slots.
Prenatal-to-3 Policy Impact Center 2026
www.pn3policy.org
