Licensed Toddler Care in Shirley, NY

Toddler Care in Shirley

As of August 2026

23 providers make up Shirley's child care roster, and OCFS licensing data shows every one of them operating as a center. Combined licensed capacity reaches 531 children, averaging about 23 per site, and the roster is overwhelmingly weighted toward school-age care, with 22 of 23 providers serving that age group. 4 providers, including Colonial Youth and Family Services Inc., carry a QUALITYstarsNY rating. CloverMap lists Shirley's full provider set with capacity and rating details attached for families comparing options.

What to know about childcare in Shirley

All 23 of Shirley's listed providers are centers; New York State Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS) records show no family or group family day care homes registered in the city. Every option here is a dedicated facility with classroom-based programming and multiple staff, rather than a smaller in-home setting, so a Shirley search comes down to comparing centers on size, focus, and rating rather than operating format.

Licensed capacity across the 23 reporting providers totals 531 children, for an average of about 23 per site — a modest figure for this cohort, suggesting Shirley's centers run leaner than some neighboring cities. That can mean tighter competition for open seats even though the total provider count is comparable to nearby towns.

Shirley's roster is heavily concentrated in school-age care: 22 of 23 providers serve school-age children, while only 1 report serving preschoolers and none report dedicated infant or toddler capacity. That's an important pattern for planning — families with an infant or toddler should expect to search beyond Shirley, while those needing before- or after-school care will find the deepest local bench in this cohort.

Every provider on this list is licensed or registered through OCFS, the state agency that sets and enforces child care standards across New York. A license confirms a program has met the state's baseline requirements for staffing, group size, and health and safety practices before enrolling children — a floor, not a ranking, so schedule and program style still deserve a direct look.

4 Shirley providers, including Colonial Youth and Family Services Inc., carry a QUALITYstarsNY rating, New York's voluntary quality-improvement program — a solid share of the roster given the city's overall size, and a reasonable starting shortlist for families who want a quality signal alongside licensing status.

Given how strongly Shirley's roster skews toward school-age programming, families with younger children may find more options in a neighboring city, while CloverMap's Shirley listings remain the fastest way to see exactly which of the twenty-three providers serve which age group before making any calls. For families set on Shirley specifically, the practical move is to start with the 22 school-age providers and the single preschool-serving provider first, since those are the categories with real depth, and to treat an infant or toddler search as a multi-city effort from the start, checking neighboring cities on CloverMap in parallel rather than after exhausting the local list.