Fourteen questions, answered properly.

Bright Start is open Monday to Friday, 6:00 am to 6:30 pm, and closed at weekends. There is no early-drop or late-stay surcharge inside those hours — one price covers the day, whether your child is here for six hours or twelve. After 6:30 pm we charge $1 a minute, which exists to protect our staff’s evenings rather than to make money.

Weekly tuition at Bright Start runs from $58 for before-school care to $255 for full-time infant care, and every rate is published on the schedules and tuition page. Meals, snacks, materials and school-holiday cover are included. The only extra charges are a $75 registration fee once a year, optional nappies at $12 a week, and late pick-up.

Yes. Bright Start accepts Child Care Services (CCS), the subsidy programme funded by the Texas Workforce Commission and administered in Bexar County by Workforce Solutions Alamo. If you are approved, the board pays the provider directly and your family pays a parent share of cost set on a sliding scale — federal rules cap that share at 7% of household income. You apply through the local board, not through us, but we will sit down with you and help you fill it in.

We staff at or better than the Texas minimum in every room: 1:4 with infants, 1:7 with toddlers, 1:11 in preschool, 1:14 in Pre-K and 1:18 with school-age children. Texas would allow 1:9 for eighteen-month-olds and 1:18 for four-year-olds. The full state table, alongside ours, is on the safety and licensing page — and you can check any Texas centre’s standards and inspection history yourself at the state’s public search.

Texas publishes every licensed operation’s permit status, minimum-standard deficiencies and inspection dates at childcare.hhs.texas.gov, free and without an account. Search by name, address or ZIP code. Do this for us and for every other centre on your list — a centre that will not tell you its licence number is telling you something.

A licensed child-care centre cares for seven or more children in a building that is not the operator’s home, and is inspected by the state at least once a year. A licensed child-care home cares for seven to twelve children in the caregiver’s own home and is also inspected at least once a year. A registered child-care home cares for up to six children in the caregiver’s home, plus up to six more school-age children after school, and is inspected less often than a licensed operation — though the state always investigates a complaint. Bright Start is a licensed child-care centre.

The waitlist is by date of request, per room, and it is free to join. Siblings of currently enrolled children move ahead of new families, and that is the only exception. We call in order, we tell you your position when you ask, and we do not take a deposit to hold a place on the list.

Yes, and you should. Come during the day when the rooms are full rather than at 5:30 pm when they are half empty. You do not need an appointment, though calling first means the director will be free to walk you round. Ask to see the room your child would actually be in, and ask what the ratio is in that room right now.

We follow the exclusion criteria in the Texas minimum standards. In practice, keep your child home if they have a fever over 100°F under the arm together with a change in behaviour, two or more episodes of vomiting or watery stools in twenty-four hours, an undiagnosed rash with fever, mouth sores with drooling, or an illness that stops them taking part in normal activity. They can come back twenty-four hours after the fever ends without medication and after any prescribed antibiotic has been running for a full day.

Yes, with your written authorisation and in the original labelled container. Prescriptions must carry your child’s name, the dose and the prescriber. We log every dose with the time and the person who gave it, and we will not give a medication that is expired, unlabelled, or in a different container. Rescue inhalers and epinephrine auto-injectors are kept unlocked and immediately reachable in the room, with an individual care plan signed by you and your child’s doctor.

Every child with a diagnosed allergy has a written care plan from their doctor, a photo card posted in the kitchen and in their room, and a substitution written into the menu. Our kitchen is nut-free. Staff in the room know which children are affected without having to look it up, and every classroom carries the child’s own epinephrine auto-injector where it can be reached in seconds.

Only an adult named on your authorised pick-up list, and only with photo identification, every time, including people we know well. You can add or remove names in writing at any time. We will not release a child to an adult who is not on the list — including a parent — and if a court order restricts contact we need a copy on file. If we have a genuine concern about someone’s ability to drive, we will call another authorised adult, and we will not make that a negotiation at the door.

Yes. Every classroom has at least one teacher who speaks Spanish natively, circle time and story time alternate between the two languages, and our forms, daily sheets, menus and notices are written in both. You can enrol, ask a question, raise a complaint and read your child’s progress note entirely in Spanish.

We run morning and afternoon routes to five nearby elementary campuses in our own vehicles, with a certified driver and a second adult on board, and a name-by-name headcount on and off. If your school is not on the list, call us — if there are enough families we will look at adding a route.