Licensed Preschool in Lima, OH

Preschool in Lima

As of July 2026

Lima's 45 providers in Ohio's licensing data split as 30 centers and 14 home-based programs. Of those, 21 carry a Google rating, averaging 4.2 stars, and 10 are rated 4.5 stars or higher. Under Ohio's Step Up To Quality system, 28 Lima providers hold a Gold, Silver, or Bronze rating — 11 Gold, 6 Silver, and 11 Bronze, an unusually even three-way split. CloverMap lists Lima's full roster, including verified providers like The Preschool at Allentown, for parents comparing options.

What to know about childcare in Lima

Lima's 45 providers lean toward centers, with 30 centers to 14 homes — about 67% centers and 31% homes. That gives Lima families a center-first starting point for most searches, while still leaving a real, if smaller, pool of home-based providers to consider — 14 in total, enough for a genuine comparison rather than a single fallback option.

Lima's Step Up To Quality distribution is unusually balanced: 28 of 45 providers, or 62%, hold a medal, split almost evenly as 11 Gold, 6 Silver, and 11 Bronze. Few comparable Ohio cities show that kind of even spread across all three tiers. Google ratings cover 21 providers, averaging 4.2 stars, with 10 rated 4.5 stars or higher — a smaller share of the roster than the medaled count, but still a solid base for comparison.

Every Lima provider operates under a license from Ohio's Department of Children and Youth (DCY), the agency that sets the baseline requirements — staffing, health and safety, and operational standards — for centers and family child care homes statewide. Step Up To Quality is the voluntary layer on top of that license, and Lima's near-even medal split means no single tier dominates the way Gold or Bronze does in some other cities. That's a reminder that medal distribution varies meaningfully from one Ohio city to the next, even among cities of similar size.

It's also worth noting that Lima's medal distribution — roughly a third each Gold, Silver, and Bronze — is one of the more balanced among comparable Ohio cities, most of which lean heavily toward one tier. That evenness means the medal alone doesn't sort Lima providers into a clear top-versus-bottom group the way it might elsewhere.

For a Lima parent, the center-lean mix (30 of 45 providers) is the natural starting point, with the 14 home-based programs as a real alternative. Because Lima's Step Up To Quality medals are spread evenly across Gold, Silver, and Bronze, checking the specific tier matters more here than in a city where one tier dominates — a Gold rating isn't proportionally more common than a Silver or Bronze one. Cross-referencing against a Google rating, where available, adds a further independent check.

Given Lima's relatively even medal spread, a parent's shortlist is likely to include a mix of Gold, Silver, and Bronze providers rather than a single dominant tier. Checking the specific medal on each of the 28 rated providers, alongside the Google rating for the 21 that have one, is a reasonable way to compare a list of 45 options down to a manageable few.