How We Rank After School Programs
Our "best after school programs" pages rank care programs on a 100-point score. Every point comes from a public record. We don't use paid placement, star ratings copied from other sites, or our own opinion.
The score
| Signal | Points |
|---|---|
| Licensed by the state, or run by the school district on a school site | 30 |
| Holds a Florida Gold Seal Quality Care designation | 15 |
| Inspected by the state in the last 12 months | 10 |
| Years licensed (2 points a year, up to 20) | 20 |
| Open until 6 PM or later on weekdays | 10 |
| Offers transportation from school | 10 |
| Has a phone number and posted hours | 5 |
Ties are broken alphabetically. Scores are recalculated each time we refresh the data.
What the score doesn't measure
A score can't tell you about staff warmth, curriculum quality or whether a program suits your child. It also can't yet reflect inspection violations, because the state data feed we use doesn't publish them in a form we can count. Read the full inspection record (linked on every licensed listing) and visit before enrolling.
When pages appear
- A city's "best" page is published only when it has at least 5 care programs to compare.
- A city page for one activity type (for example soccer) is published only when it has at least 3 programs.
- City pages with fewer than 3 programs stay visible but are hidden from search engines until we have more to show.
Reviews
We publish parent reviews collected on this site from verified parents only. We never write reviews, invent reviewers or copy review text from other websites. If a review was incentivised in any way, that is disclosed on the review itself.