How the compliance score is calculated
Tom wants to know what PTRS would say about Claymont if the compliance score worked. This page says what PTRS does, in the order it does it: the eight steps, the weighting, and what each of the eight checks tests. Read the warning first.
Steps 1 to 3 run correctly. Step 4 fails. Steps 5 to 8, saving the result, writing the alerts, telling open screens and recording the measurements, never happen, at any site, in any organisation. Everything on this page from "What each check tests" onward describes work that runs and is then thrown away.
The eight steps
| Step | What PTRS does | Runs today |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Gather the site's data | Yes |
| 2 | Run all eight checks | Yes |
| 3 | Work out the weighted overall score | Yes, and then discarded |
| 4 | Sort the results by area | Fails |
| 5 | Save the result | No |
| 6 | Write one alert per problem | No |
| 7 | Tell open screens | No |
| 8 | Record the measurements | No |
Step 4, in full
At step 4 PTRS lists the results by area. Eight checks feed six areas, and three of the checks, staffing presence, safety assessment and emergency action plans, all belong to the Safety area. When PTRS meets Safety for the second time it stops, because it expected each area once.
The five-minute check catches this for each site, writes "Failed to evaluate compliance for location" and the site into its log, and moves on. It always reaches the end, so PTRS's own task monitor shows it as healthy. No compliance result and no compliance alert has ever been stored by it.
The weighting
Two weight tables exist, and Safety and Incidents are swapped between them.
| Area | The check that works out the score | Every screen, the PDF and the simulator |
|---|---|---|
| Staff Ratios | 25% | 25% |
| Credentials | 20% | 20% |
| Incidents | 20% | 10% |
| Documentation | 15% | 15% |
| Safety | 10% | 20% |
| CACFP | 10% | 10% |
Both add up to 100%. If a result were ever saved, the number stored and the number shown would be weighted differently.
The mean divides by the weights present, not by 100%
Step 3 adds up each check's score times its area's weight, and divides by the total of the weights it added. It does this per check, not per area, so Safety's 10% is added three times and the total is 120%, not 100%.
Worked out Every area's real share is its weight divided by 1.2:
| Area | Weight | Real share |
|---|---|---|
| Staff Ratios | 25% | 20.8% |
| Credentials | 20% | 16.7% |
| Incidents | 20% | 16.7% |
| Documentation | 15% | 12.5% |
| Safety, three checks at 10% each | 10% | 25.0% together |
| CACFP | 10% | 8.3% |
Safety becomes the heaviest area, at a quarter of the score, and staff ratios, which the design meant to be heaviest, fall to a fifth. This is already true of the number worked out at step 3. Fixing step 4 alone would leave it in place. It is why the Attendance section does not claim that ratios are a quarter of the compliance score.
What the checks are given
Before any check runs, PTRS gathers, for one site:
| What | From where | How far back |
|---|---|---|
| Rooms | Every room at the site, with its most recent headcount note | Latest only |
| Staff | Every staff member at the site, with credentials | All |
| Incidents | Incidents at the site | Last 90 days |
| Children | Children who checked in at the site in the last 30 days. If none did, every active child in the organisation. | Last 30 days |
| Days open | Days with an attendance session at the site | Last 30 days |
| Days with meals | Days with a meal record at the site | Last 30 days |
| Site health profile | The site's last safety assessment date | Current |
| Emergency action plans | Active plans at the site, with signature dates | Current |
Two of these matter before the checks that use them. A room with no headcount note is treated as empty, so a room nobody has ever recorded scores as a compliant empty room rather than as unknown. And if nobody checked in at a site in the last 30 days, a summer-only site in February or a site not using check-in, the documentation check quietly switches from "the children who attend here" to "every active child in the organisation".
What each check tests
Each check gives a score out of 100, a pass or fail, one line of detail and a list of alerts. The alerts are what would become alert rows at step 6.
Check 1: staff ratios
Area: Staff Ratios. Per room, from the latest headcount note:
| Condition | Result |
|---|---|
| No staff and at least one child | Violation, "children with NO staff present" |
| No staff and no children | The room is skipped |
| 15 to 1 or worse | Violation, "exceeds DELACARE 15:1 limit" |
| 14 to 1 or worse | Warning, "at critical threshold (14:1)" |
| 13 to 1 or worse | Warning, "approaching limit (13:1)" |
The score starts at 100, loses 20 per warning and 40 per violation, and cannot go below 0. The check passes with no violations, so a room at 14 to 1 costs 20 points and still passes.
The three thresholds are fixed inside PTRS and apply to every room whatever its own limit and whatever the children's ages. From the regulation 15 to 1 is the DELACARE school-age limit; the check applies it to infant, toddler and preschool rooms too. The two other places PTRS works out a ratio differently are on How ratio compliance is measured.
Check 2: credentials
Area: Credentials. For each active staff member, for each of four required credentials, CPR, First Aid, Medication Administration and Background Check, PTRS takes the one with the latest expiry, then:
| Condition | Counted as |
|---|---|
| No credential of that kind at all | Expired |
| Marked expired, or expiry before today | Expired |
| Marked expiring soon, or expiry within 90 days | Expiring |
The score starts at 100, loses 10 per expiring credential and 25 per expired one, and stays between 0 and 100. It passes only when nothing is expired.
Two consequences. A person holding the combined CPR/First Aid credential satisfies neither CPR nor First Aid here, so they count as two expired credentials, 50 points. And four missing credentials on two people is enough to take the whole area to zero.
Check 3: OCCL incident deadlines
Area: Incidents. Over the last 90 days of incidents where OCCL is required. If there are none, the score is 100.
For each such incident whose OCCL status is still Pending or Not Required: if it has a deadline in the past, it is overdue; if it has no deadline, PTRS counts business days since the incident and calls it overdue after one. Business days skip Saturday and Sunday and no public holidays.
The score is 0 if anything is overdue and 100 otherwise. There is no middle. One overdue notification takes the whole area to zero.
Check 4: documentation
Area: Documentation. Per child, four things, all needed:
| Check | Satisfied when |
|---|---|
| Guardian | The child has at least one guardian linked |
| Emergency contact | The child has a main guardian recorded |
| Allergy information | The child has allergy information recorded, even "none" |
| Enrolment complete | Both of the previous two |
The score is the percentage of children with all four, to one decimal place. It passes at 90% or above, the only check with a pass mark other than "no violations". The first ten incomplete children are named in the alerts. Because the last two items are drawn from the first two, a child with a main guardian and an allergy record satisfies all four.
Check 5: CACFP meal records
Area: CACFP. The score is the number of days with any meal record divided by the number of days with any attendance session, over the last 30 days, as a percentage. It is 100 when there were no days open. It passes only when the two counts are equal. Below 80% it raises the alert "CACFP compliance below 80% threshold. Federal meal subsidy reimbursement may be at risk."
The check compares days on which anything was recorded, not meals against children. A day with one meal record counts the same as a day with three meal services.
Check 6: staffing presence
Area: Safety. Only rooms with children present count. If there are none, the score is 100 and the check is "not applicable".
Otherwise, first a gate: at least one active staff member at the site must hold a CPR credential that has not expired. If nobody does, the score is 0 with the alert "No qualified staff with current CPR certification on premises while children are present." Then a measurement: any occupied room whose recorded ratio is above its own limit is a violation, and the score is the percentage of occupied rooms that are within limit.
This is a second ratio test in the same run, and it is not the same as check
- Check 1 applies 13, 14 and 15 to every room; check 6 uses the room's own limit and reads the ratio already recorded on the headcount note. The two checks can disagree about the same room in the same run. The CPR gate is site-wide, so one person with current CPR anywhere on site satisfies it for every room.
Check 7: safety assessment
Area: Safety. Reads the site's last safety assessment date.
| Condition | Score |
|---|---|
| The site has no health profile at all | 0, failed: "safety assessment status unknown" |
| A profile, but no assessment date | 0, failed: "never been performed" |
| More than 365 days since the assessment | 0, failed: "overdue" |
| Due within 30 days | Days until due, divided by 30, as a percentage; passed, with a warning |
| Otherwise | 100 |
From the regulation The annual cadence is the rule PTRS applies; the 365 days are fixed inside PTRS. Note the first row: a site with no health profile at all scores zero on safety, the same as a site whose assessment is years overdue, so a newly created site starts at zero until somebody sets one up.
Check 8: emergency action plan signatures
Area: Safety. Over active emergency action plans at the site. The score is 100 if there are none. A plan is non-compliant if the physician's signature is missing or more than 365 days old, or the parent's signature is missing or more than 365 days old. The score is the percentage of compliant plans, and the check fails if any plan has a problem. Each such plan is named in an alert with the child's name, the plan type and what is wrong.
From the regulation The annual re-signature is the rule PTRS applies; the 365 days are fixed inside PTRS.
What would be saved, if step 4 succeeded
One result per site per run: the date, the overall score from step 3, the breakdown by area from step 4, and every check's detail. And one alert per alert line on every failed check, with its area, a severity of Critical when the check scored exactly 0 and Warning otherwise, and a due date, acknowledged time, resolved time and resolver that nothing in PTRS ever fills in, so an alert could be created and never resolved. Because severity turns on a score of exactly 0, check 3 is the only one that would routinely produce a Critical alert, because it has no middle score.
Why the number on your screen is not this number
The screens do not work any of this out. They read the two kinds of record the checks would have written, and those are empty. What the Compliance Radar shows instead, 0% everywhere, a fixed -1.2% trend, a fixed 18.5-hour resolution time and an 85% meal-coverage bar made by multiplication, is itemised on Compliance.
The one panel that works out something real, Credential Tracker, does not use any of this. It reads the staff list and does its own date arithmetic in your browser.
Which of these would count?
Claymont's gym has 16 children and 1 adult on its latest headcount note.
Check 1 would call it a violation at 16 to 1, costing 40 points in Staff Ratios. Check 6 would compare 16 to the gym's own limit. Then step 4 fails and both results are thrown away. Nobody hears.
Denise holds one combined CPR/First Aid card.
Check 2 would count her as missing both CPR and First Aid, two expired credentials, 50 points off Credentials. The Credential Tracker panel, which does work, would show her combined card as current. Record a combined card as two credentials; see Record a credential.
Related
- Compliance, the full list of what is not wired up
- Prepare for an OCCL inspection, the eight checks as a paper checklist
- What the Compliance Radar can and cannot show
- How ratio compliance is measured
Checked against PTRS on 7 September 2026.