Does a CPR-certified person have to be in every classroom, or just in the building?

The short answer

In the building, in three of the five states we model. In every room, in Georgia. And in Colorado the question is the wrong one entirely — the answer there depends on how many children are in attendance.

If you have been told "one CPR-certified person per centre" or "one per classroom," you have been told one state's rule. Both are correct somewhere and wrong somewhere else, and the error is not a matter of a number being slightly off. It is a different shape of duty, which means a different thing to schedule.

Here is the whole comparison in one table, with each state's clause and each state's own reference page. Every row below is from that state's credentials rule family, verified against primary rule text on the date given.

State	Who must be covered	Clause	Verified
North Carolina	One trained person present at the site — separately for first aid and for CPR	10A NCAC 09 .1102(c), .1102(d)	2026-08-10
North Carolina, infant rooms	One ITS-SIDS-trained person present in each infant room	10A NCAC 09 .1102(f)	2026-08-10
South Carolina	One person with a single combined pediatric certification present in the centre, and on outings	R.114-503.K.(5)(h)	2026-10-02
Georgia	One person holding both CPR and first aid present in each occupied classroom	591-1-1-.14(2)(b)	2026-10-02
Georgia, additionally	Fifty percent of the caregiver staff present must be trained	591-1-1-.14(2)(a)	2026-10-02
Georgia, additionally	The Center Director personally, at all times	591-1-1-.14(2)(d)	2026-10-02
Colorado	One qualified person on duty per thirty or fewer children in attendance, at each location	8 CCR 1402-1 §2.213(E)	2026-10-01
Colorado, infant rooms	One qualified person on duty in each infant room at all times	8 CCR 1402-1 §2.216(B)(1)(e)	2026-10-01
Massachusetts	One educator certified in first aid and age-appropriate CPR present program-wide	606 CMR 7.11(1)(a)(1)	2026-10-03
Massachusetts, additionally	One educator trained in medication administration present program-wide	606 CMR 7.11(1)(b)(1)	2026-10-03

Ten rows for five states, because four of the five state one duty more than once at more than one scope. The rest of this page is what each shape means when you are building a roster.

Four shapes, not "requirements vary by state"

Read down the clause column and the duties sort into four structurally different kinds. The distinction matters because each one scales with something different — and what a duty scales with is what makes it expensive or cheap to satisfy.

Shape	What it scales with	States	Operational consequence
Site-wide, minimum one	Nothing. One person covers the location	NC (first aid, CPR), SC, MA (first aid/CPR, medication)	One qualified person satisfies a centre of any size
Per occupied classroom, minimum one	Room count	GA (CPR + first aid together), NC (infant rooms, ITS-SIDS), CO (infant rooms)	Open a seventh room, you need a seventh qualified person on that shift
Per headcount of children	Enrolment and attendance, hour by hour	CO	Thirty-one children in attendance needs a second qualified person; thirty needs one
Proportional to staff present	Staff count	GA (fifty percent of caregiver staff present)	Adding untrained staff can break compliance, which no other shape does

That last row is worth sitting with. In Georgia, hiring an extra untrained aide for a busy afternoon can move a centre out of compliance with 591-1-1-.14(2)(a) while every other duty stays satisfied and nobody's certificate changed. A rule keyed to the proportion of trained staff behaves in the opposite direction from every other rule on this page.

Why "CPR: certified — yes" cannot answer any of these

Each of these four shapes is a question about a moment: who is standing where, right now, while children are in care. None of them is a question about a filing cabinet.

A staff-record field that says a person holds CPR tells you nothing about whether:

• anyone qualified is on the 1:30 shift in Colorado when attendance tips from 30 to 31;
• the one qualified person in Georgia's Room 4 holds both cards rather than one of them;
• your single first-aid holder in North Carolina is standing in the infant room that also needs an ITS-SIDS holder, or in the one that does not;
• the Massachusetts educator present at 6:15pm is the one with medication administration training, or a different person who has first aid.

This is the same argument the licensing rules make about staff-to-child ratios — that a single divisor cannot express a rule with a step or a session in it — applied to credentials instead of ratios. We evaluate these as live coverage duties against who is actually present, for that reason: a records list and a presence list answer different questions, and these clauses ask the presence one.

What that does and does not get you from us. We compute whether a qualified person is present for each duty above, at the scope that duty's own text sets. We do not tell you that your centre is compliant, and we cannot — a licensing visit assesses your centre, not your software, and 45 CFR 98.42(b)(2)(i)(B) makes it unannounced. KinderBee is at a pilot, disclosed stage: we show you what the rule says and when a record stops satisfying it.

North Carolina: site-wide for two credentials, per-room for a third

North Carolina states the duty three times, and the scope changes between them (NC credentials rule set, verified against primary text 2026-08-10).

• First aid — "At all times when children are in care at least one staff member present must have successfully completed First Aid training," 10A NCAC 09 .1102(c). Due within 90 days of employment.
• CPR — "At all times when children are in care one staff member present must have successfully completed CPR training," 10A NCAC 09 .1102(d). Due within 90 days of employment.
• ITS-SIDS — "At all times, one child care provider who has completed ITS-SIDS training shall be present in the infant room while children are in care," 10A NCAC 09 .1102(f).

So one person covers the site for first aid and for CPR, and a separate person must be present in each infant room for ITS-SIDS. A centre with a single first-aid holder satisfies .1102(c) and can still breach .1102(f) in two of its three infant rooms.

Two details that are easy to flatten and should not be:

These are two credentials, not one. .1102(c) and .1102(d) are separate clauses with separate coverage duties. North Carolina does not require one person to hold both, the way Georgia does — the first-aid holder and the CPR holder may be two different people on the same shift.

ITS-SIDS's clock starts at room assignment, not at hire. .1102(f) sets the training "within two months of an individual assuming responsibilities in the infant room and every three years thereafter." We compute that initial deadline from the actual day someone is assigned to the infant room, not from hire date — record the room assignment and the clock starts from the real event the rule names; leave it unrecorded and we score the duty as unmet rather than guessing. The three-year renewal we carry correctly too. Full detail on North Carolina's ITS-SIDS page, which is also the piece for the rest of what 10A NCAC 09 asks of a staff record.

North Carolina also bars distance learning for CPR. We record that a person holds the credential, not how they earned it, so a card we show as valid could have been earned a way North Carolina does not accept. Start at North Carolina for the per-family picture.

South Carolina: one combined certification, and it travels

R.114-503.K.(5)(h) (SC credentials rule set, verified against primary text 2026-10-02):

At least one person who is certified in pediatric first aid, including rescue breathing, CPR, and management of a blocked airway shall be present in the center at all times when children are in care, and during group outings or field trips.

Three things in one sentence, each of which distinguishes South Carolina from a neighbour:

1. One combined certification, not two cards. The clause names first aid "including" rescue breathing, CPR and blocked-airway management as a single qualification — unlike Georgia, which requires a person holding two separate certifications.
2. Centre-wide, not per classroom.
3. The duty follows the children off-site. Group outings and field trips are named in the rule text itself. That makes the arithmetic sharper than it looks: a trip that takes your only certified person off-site leaves the centre uncovered, and leaving them behind does not cover the trip. One certified person is enough for a centre and is not enough for a centre plus a trip.

South Carolina's infant-room language is a recommendation, not a duty — and we did not seed it as one. The same rule addresses infant and toddler classrooms and mealtimes in recommending language. We model the required coverage and left the recommended provisions out, because scoring a centre against a recommendation would produce findings the state would not. If you came to this page looking for an infant-room first-aid requirement, South Carolina's staffing rule at R.114-503.K sets none — that is the clause our verification pass read, and we state the absence no wider than the pass that establishes it. Colorado and North Carolina each set one in rule text we cite below. South Carolina carries the per-family status.

Georgia: the hardest of the four shapes, three duties deep

591-1-1-.14(2)(b) (GA credentials rule set, verified against primary text 2026-10-02):

There must always be one staff person present in each classroom where children are present that has current and valid pediatric CPR and pediatric first aid training.

One person holding both. Not one CPR holder plus one first-aid holder working the same room — that reading is a materially easier roster to build, which is exactly why centres build it and then fail an inspection on a room they believed was covered.

And .14(2)(b) does not stand alone. Georgia states the obligation three times at three scopes, and all three apply at once: the per-classroom duty above, 591-1-1-.14(2)(a)'s requirement that at least fifty percent of the caregiver staff present be trained, and 591-1-1-.14(2)(d)'s requirement that the Center Director personally hold current CPR and first aid at all times. A centre running six rooms with exactly one dual-certified person each, plus seven untrained aides, meets the first duty and breaches the second.

The renewal clocks are the part that quietly breaks rosters. 591-1-1-.14(1)(a) — a different clause from the coverage clauses, and this distinction matters — sets certification within 45 days of hire, then a biennial program in pediatric CPR and a triennial program in pediatric first aid. Twenty-four months and thirty-six months do not stay aligned. Somebody certified in both on the same January day is dual-qualified for 24 months; in month 25 their CPR has lapsed while their first aid is good for another year, so they still personally hold "a" certification and no longer satisfy .14(2)(b) for their classroom. Nobody's certificate expired in the sense a director usually watches for. The pair came apart. Does every classroom need a CPR-certified staff member in Georgia? is the piece that works that drift through on a roster, clock by clock.

Georgia has the per-family status, including which of Georgia's rule families have been verified against primary text and which have not.

Colorado: the duty is keyed to children, not to rooms

8 CCR 1402-1 §2.213(E) (CO credentials rule set, verified against primary text 2026-10-01):

For every thirty (30) or fewer children in attendance, there must be at least one (1) staff member on duty who holds a current Department-approved First Aid and Safety certificate, including cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) for all ages of children... If children are at different locations, there must be a First Aid and CPR qualified staff member at each location.

This is the shape no other state on this page uses. The duty scales with attendance: ninety children in attendance needs three qualified staff on duty, in any configuration of rooms. And the final sentence repeats the whole duty per physical location when children are split across sites, so a campus does not pool its coverage.

This is a credential coverage duty, not a staff-to-child ratio. The "thirty or fewer children in attendance" phrasing sits right next to ratio language and is not ratio language: it asks how many qualified people are on duty, not how many adults. Colorado's ratio rules are a separate rule family, verified separately, and no ratio claim is made on this page.

Colorado's infant rooms carry a second, stricter duty on top. §2.216(B)(1)(e) requires at least one qualified staff member on duty in each infant room at all times. It stacks on the campus duty; it does not substitute for it.

One number in our Colorado data is not Colorado's number

§2.213(E) requires a "current" Department-approved certificate and states no renewal interval at all. Our data carries a 24-month value on that row so the software has something to compute against. That 24 months is the common term printed on first-aid certificates, not a figure quoted from Colorado's rules — and the certificate's own printed expiry governs and overrides it. If the card says eighteen months, eighteen months is the answer.

We label it because the alternative is quietly presenting a vendor default as a state requirement. Colorado does not say twenty-four months, and we will not put that number in Colorado's mouth. The same label, alongside Colorado's other staff-credential clocks, sits on can a Colorado daycare employee work while their background check is pending?. Colorado has the per-family status, including which of Colorado's rule families have been verified against primary text and which have not.

Massachusetts: program-wide, twice, on two different credentials

Massachusetts states two coverage duties in the same subsection, both program-wide (MA credentials rule set, verified against primary text 2026-10-03):

Duty	Requirement	Clause
First aid and age-appropriate CPR	"at least one educator currently certified in first aid and age-appropriate cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is present at any and all times when children are in care"	606 CMR 7.11(1)(a)(1)
Medication administration	"at least one educator with training in medication administration is present at any and all times when children are in care"	606 CMR 7.11(1)(b)(1)

The second is the one most cross-state comparisons miss. It is a coverage duty in exactly the same shape as the first — one qualified educator present at all times children are in care — on a completely different credential. A Massachusetts centre can be fully covered for CPR at 6pm and uncovered for medication administration, and 7.11(1)(b)(1) is breached either way.

Both are program-wide, not per-classroom, and we model them at location scope for that reason. Do not carry a per-room assumption into Massachusetts, and do not carry a Massachusetts program-wide assumption out of it. For the other Massachusetts clock a staff file carries, see how often is a Massachusetts EEC background record check required? — which instrument sets that interval, and which one a vendor screen is likely to cite for it, is the question that page answers. Massachusetts has the per-family status, including which of Massachusetts' rule families have been verified against primary text and which have not.

"Infant room" does not mean the same thing in two states

Three of the duties above are scoped to infant rooms, and the two states that define the boundary define it differently. This is a place where carrying one state's habit into another produces a confident wrong answer.

State	Infant-room duty	How the room boundary is expressed in our model	Source of that boundary
NC	ITS-SIDS holder present, .1102(f)	A room holding a child 12 months or younger	.1102(f) names "infant room" without defining an age; we read it against 10A NCAC 09 .0606's definition of the infants the safe-sleep rule covers
CO	First-aid holder on duty, §2.216(B)(1)(e)	A room holding a child under 18 months	§2.204's "infant program" definition, six weeks to eighteen months
SC	None — the infant-room language at K.(5)(h) is recommending, not required	—	—

North Carolina's twelve months is our reading of how two rules fit together, not a number quoted from .1102(f). Colorado's eighteen months comes from Colorado's own definition. A thirteen-month-old sits inside Colorado's infant-room duty and outside North Carolina's, and that is a real difference between the two states rather than an inconsistency in our data.

Most of these rules set no renewal interval at all

Coverage duties ask who is present with a current certificate — so the obvious next question is how long a certificate stays current. Only three of the duties in the table at the top of this page carry a state-set interval. An interval is stated below only with the clause that actually contains it; where a state is silent we say silent, rather than implying a cadence.

Rule	What the state says about renewal
GA pediatric CPR, 591-1-1-.14(1)(a)	Biennial — "a biennial training program in pediatric cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR)"
GA pediatric first aid, 591-1-1-.14(1)(a)	Triennial — "a triennial training program in pediatric first aid"
NC ITS-SIDS, 10A NCAC 09 .1102(f)	Every three years — "and every three years thereafter," in the same subsection as the duty
NC first aid, .1102(c)	"renewed on or before expiration of the certification" — the card's own date governs
MA first aid/CPR, 606 CMR 7.11(1)(a)(2)	"renewed prior to the expiration date listed on the CPR certificate" — the card's own date
NC CPR, .1102(d)	No renewal provision at all. The clause states the coverage duty and the 90-day deadline, and nothing about renewal
SC pediatric first aid/CPR, R.114-503.K.(5)(h)	No interval. Our row therefore carries none
CO first aid, §2.213(E)	Requires a "current" certificate and states no interval (see the labelled 24-month note above)
CO infant-room first aid, §2.216(B)(1)(e)	No interval. Requires a "current" certificate
MA medication administration, 606 CMR 7.11(1)(b)	No interval stated

The rows sort into three genuinely different claims, and collapsing them is the mistake worth avoiding. Georgia and North Carolina's ITS-SIDS clause state a cadence. North Carolina's first-aid clause and Massachusetts' CPR clause tell you to go by the certificate's own expiry. The remaining four say nothing about renewal at all — Colorado asks for a "current" certificate without defining how long current lasts, and North Carolina's CPR clause and South Carolina's clause are silent.

"Go by the date on the card" is a sensible operating rule for all seven of the non-Georgia rows. It is a rule two of those clauses state and five of them do not, which is a different thing from a rule your state set.

The common printed term on a CPR card is 24 months. That is a fact about cards, not about any of these states, and we do not attribute it to one.

The federal five-year floor does not reach these duties at all

45 CFR 98.43 (FEDERAL credentials rule set, verified against primary text 2026-10-01) is about background-check components and their five-year re-check. It sets no CPR or first-aid coverage requirement, and our federal rule set contains no coverage duty of any kind — every row in it is a background-check type.

So nothing on this page is floored, raised or changed by federal law. If you have seen the federal five-year rule discussed alongside CPR coverage, the two are unrelated obligations that happen to both live in a staff file. How the floor actually works — it takes the stricter of state and federal, and in three of five states it changes nothing — is the subject of how often daycare background checks need to be renewed.

So what about a field trip?

The honest answer differs by state, and in one state we cannot answer it from our model.

• South Carolina: yes, by the clause's own words. K.(5)(h) extends the coverage duty to "group outings or field trips" explicitly, and we carry the clause.
• Colorado: yes, if the trip is a location. §2.213(E)'s "if children are at different locations" sentence requires a qualified staff member at each location.
• Georgia: yes, and we do not evaluate it. 591-1-1-.14(2)(c) requires a CPR/first-aid-qualified staff member present during any field trip or transportation of children. That is an activity-scoped duty — a fifth shape — and our model does not express it outside an actual vehicle trip. A non-vehicle field trip is uncovered here entirely. Georgia's separate transportation training requirement at .36(3) is not the same thing: holding the training does not satisfy the field-trip coverage duty.
• North Carolina and Massachusetts: the clauses above are silent on outings, and we are not going to extrapolate one. Their text says "when children are in care" and "at any and all times when children are in care"; what that covers off-premises is not something these subsections resolve.

What this page does not cover

A reference page with no stated gaps is marketing. These are the limits of what is above.

• Georgia's .14(2)(c) field-trip and transportation coverage duty is not modelled outside an actual vehicle trip, as described above. It is a real obligation and it is your calendar, not ours.
• North Carolina's and Massachusetts' position on off-site coverage is not stated by the clauses cited, and we do not infer one.
• South Carolina's infant/toddler-room and mealtime provisions at R.114-503.K.(5)(h) are recommendations and are not seeded as duties. A South Carolina centre will not see an infant-room coverage finding from us, because R.114-503.K sets no such duty. That absence is established at clause scope, not state scope — our pass read R.114-503.K and R.114-505.G; it was not an end-to-end search of South Carolina's Chapter 114 for an infant-room coverage duty elsewhere in it. We do not claim the state sets none.
• North Carolina's twelve-month infant-room boundary is our reading of .1102(f) against .0606, not a figure .1102(f) states.
• No renewal interval is asserted for seven of the ten duties above, because seven of the clauses do not set one. Our Colorado row's 24 months is labelled above as the certificate's common term, not Colorado's number — and no other row borrows it.
• We record that a credential is held, not how it was earned — which is why North Carolina's prohibition on distance learning for CPR is something we cannot check for you.
• An unverified record counts for nothing in KinderBee: not toward a coverage duty, not as satisfying a requirement in an inspection packet. Only an administrator may verify one, never their own, and editing the dates withdraws the verification — because whatever was checked, it was not that.
• This page is the credentials rule family only. Ratio rules and training rules are verified separately from credential rules in every state here, and no claim on either family is made on this page — including Colorado's §2.213(E), which counts children and is still not a ratio rule. Which rule families have been verified against primary text, and when, is stated per family on each state's page in the state reference library, read from the rule sets themselves rather than tallied here. Check the state page before relying on a claim from another family.
• KinderBee is at a pilot, disclosed stage, not a compliance guarantee. We model rules from primary text and show you what the rule says and when a record stops satisfying it. We do not certify that your centre is compliant, and no software can.

How to check us

Every clause above was read from that state's own primary host, not from a commercial mirror or a paraphrase. Here is where to go, per state, so you can check us against the same text.

State	Host the text was read from	Note
North Carolina	reports.oah.state.nc.us — the Office of Administrative Hearings' own published text	Clauses confirmed verbatim in the pass recorded 2026-08-10
South Carolina	scstatehouse.gov/coderegs/Chapter%20114.pdf — the South Carolina Legislature's own host	Carries the State Register amendment history inline; confirmed primary rather than a mirror before we relied on it
Georgia	rules.sos.ga.gov/gac/591-1-1 — the Georgia Secretary of State's own rules host	Chapter edition dated July 1, 2025; .14 was last amended by a filing effective June 4, 2025, folded into that edition. We re-pointed this rule set off a law.cornell.edu mirror deliberately
Colorado	coloradosos.gov, 8 CCR 1402-1 at ruleVersionId=12417, effective 2026-02-14	Cornell LII, Justia and the federal ACF database all still serve the superseded 2025-02-14 text. Check us against one of those and you will find different rule numbers and reasonably conclude we are wrong. The mirror is stale, not us
Massachusetts	A Massachusetts Register-filed PDF (Register #1398) as filed, cross-read against Cornell LII	mass.gov's own regulation page returns HTTP 403 to automated retrieval, on both of our passes. Rather than cite a host we could not read, we read two independent sources and confirmed they agree verbatim on every clause this rule set depends on

For the federal clause: 45 CFR 98.43 via Cornell LII, with the effective date confirmed against the Federal Register as published (81 FR 67438).

The Colorado and Massachusetts rows are the two worth taking seriously before you compare us to anything. They point in opposite directions — in Colorado the convenient source is stale, and in Massachusetts the authoritative source would not let us read it — and both are the reason this page names a host per state instead of a citation per state.

Start with North Carolina, whose coverage text is the clearest of the five, or the state reference library for every state we model and which of their rule families have been verified against primary text.