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Isabel Ramos was overjoyed to learn her son had been accepted into Escuela Viva.
The Southeast Pine Street child care center had everything her family was looking for. It was welcoming toward children of color (Ramos is half Mexican and half Puerto Rican; her husband is half Taiwanese), and the caregivers spoke both Spanish and English. Its staffing was constant—a change from her previous day care, which would abruptly close on days when too few employees showed up for work. Two years after moving cross country, Ramos felt she’d found something stable.
But now, as her son turns 3, she isn’t sure if he’ll get to stay at Escuela Viva for preschool. And that’s an unexpected consequence of Preschool for All, Multnomah County’s universal preschool program.
The preschool director at Escuela Viva tells Ramos not to worry—she’s looking for a loophole in the county rules causing the crunch. Ramos tries.
“I’m trying not to hypothesize too much,” she says. “Something I’ve definitely thought of is, maybe I have to quit my job because it’s not just about having child care. It’s about having child care you really trust.”
It might seem counterintuitive that Preschool for All would create less stability for a child entering preschool. But the program has struggled to create new preschool seats, even as it has raked in much more money than anticipated from an income tax on high earners (“The Itsy Bitsy Project,” WW, Nov. 8, 2023).
Now, it’s experimenting with ways to make more space for children of families it vowed to prioritize—low-income families, families of color, and children with developmental disabilities. The way it’s doing that is by limiting how many kids can move up from toddler programs to preschool seats in the same child care program.
In past years, children like Ramos’ son, who is currently enrolled in a toddler program at Escuela Viva, would automatically move up to preschool when they got old enough, a practice known as continuity of care. At preschools that gave all their seats to Preschool for All, that meant kids enrolled in infant and toddler programs would receive Preschool for All automatically.
But as WW news partner KATU-TV first reported in November, Preschool for All providers will be required, starting next year, to cap the total number of seats they can reserve for children already attending their schools at 50%. That percentage will grow as the years pass by, but for preschools where all the seats are funded by Preschool for All, it means some families will be effectively forced out.
Multnomah County says it made this choice in the name of equity—85.6% of children entering a preschool through Preschool for All had household incomes at or below 350% of the federal poverty level, compared to 30% of children enrolled through continuity of care. “The county developed this policy because a growing number of Preschool for All applicants were unable to access seats in some of the most popular centers,” says county spokesman Ryan Yambra.
To be sure, finding a preschool for one’s child is difficult—that’s what made Preschool for All popular to begin with. But because it’s still working to create new capacity, the county initiative will displace families who had care in exchange for other families who also need care. In other words, the program will create the same problem for some families it’s been trying to solve for all of them.
Four parents spoke to WW for this story. All of them said they sympathized with the county’s equity-driven mission. “But my view of the program was that it was supposed to create more spots,” says Amanda Green, another Escuela Viva parent. “There are definitely equity issues, and I want those to be resolved. But I don’t want those to be resolved at the expense of my child having access to child care.”
Child care is another substantial expense for many families in Multnomah County, even if they’re above the low-income threshold. Ramos says her family spends the same—or more—on child care that it does on rent.
It’s “by far” Katie Kolesar’s largest expense. Child care costs one and half times her family’s mortgage.
Kolesar put her child on waitlists in the first trimester of her pregnancy—she’d heard about how difficult it was to find child care in the county. It took about a year and a half for her to get off a waitlist. Her son now attends Wild Lilac Child Development Community, where he’s made friends and flourished. “We wouldn’t even know until June” if her son would continue with Wild Lilac’s preschool, she says. “June through September is not enough time to find a [new] preschool.”
Providers are listening to parents who’ve been loyal customers. The county has told providers unhappy with the continuity of care changes that their options include “decreasing the number of Preschool for All seats at a location.” That’s an option providers like Wild Lilac are choosing. To accommodate all the kids who’ve been with Wild Lilac in infant and toddler care, Kolesar says it announced it would reinstate more paid seats and decrease its Preschool for All slots.
“Decreasing the number of seats at a facility that’s been an early adopter, been a willing participant, and all on board just seems counterproductive,” Kolesar says.
Yambra, the county spokesman, says the county does not anticipate the change will dramatically impact Preschool for All’s numbers.
“We are aware of two locations decreasing by a few seats each for the upcoming preschool year, and we are on track to provide at least 3,000,” Yambra says. “We do not anticipate the policy change will have a significant impact on the total number of Preschool for All seats for next year or in the future.”
Angie Garcia, Escuela Viva’s executive director, tells WW she has no intention of leaving current parents without seats. How she’ll do that is complicated and part of an unresolved negotiation with the county.
“The problem is, they sprang it on us. If a parent is barely making it work, and now you add the stress of trying to find new care, that is not healthy for children in any way,” Garcia says. “We are taking one problem, one challenge, and now creating the same challenge, just for somebody else.”