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Leaders of Multnomah County’s Preschool for All announced Monday that the program would increase capacity to 3,800 seats for the 2025–26 school year.
The new figures, presented during a press conference at Every Step Preschool in Northeast Portland, mean the county’s capacity increased by 1,575 seats from the 2024–25 school year. That’s 800 seats higher than the county’s 2022 revised goals for the program, which projected 3,000 seats for the program in the upcoming year. Ultimately, the county aims to create 11,000 seats by 2030 to meet the capacity it promised to voters in 2020.
“We are already surpassing our goals for the coming year by expanding our reach,” says Leslee Barnes, the county’s preschool and early learning director. “We are providing more choices for families and even greater opportunities for growth to all of our providers.”
But the 3,800 number exceeds the county’s goals only because it previously moved the goalposts. It still falls about 700 seats short of what the county presented as its low target goals to voters when the measure was on the ballot in 2020. Back then, the county promised between 4,500 and 5,000 seats by the 2025–26 school year. It adjusted its goals in 2022, citing the devastating impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the child care industry, and created a more “realistic growth timeline.”
To reach its goal, the program also leans heavily on converting private seats to publicly-funded seats. The county has contended this was always part of its plan, although initial documents don’t explicitly say so. To reach its goal of serving 11,000 preschoolers by 2030, the county says it will need to convert about 7,000 private provider seats alongside creating 4,000 new seats.
At the press conference, it was not immediately clear how many seats would be privately converted and how many would be brand new.
A November 2023 WW investigation into Preschool for All found that the county was vastly underspending its program budget and creating relatively few new seats with the dollars it was collecting. The program is funded by a 1.5% marginal income tax on single filers who make above $125,000; the tax increases to 3% on income over $250,000. It has generated far more money than county officials forecast (“The Itsy Bitsy Project,” WW, Nov. 8, 2023).
But the county is undertaking new projects to expand capacity with its Preschool for All Facilities Fund. In partnership with BuildUp Oregon, a nonprofit trying to expand child care facilities in Portland, it has awarded more than $16.4 million toward 44 projects to expand and improve preschool facilities throughout the county. It will request $17 million in the 2026 fiscal year for more projects, BuildUp Oregon’s Rachel Langford says.
Still, even with new growth, Barnes acknowledged Preschool for All again won’t be able to meet increasingly high demand. She says since opening the 2025–26 application window on Wednesday, the county has already received 1,300 applications. “Every year we have about double the amount of applications for seats that we have,” Barnes says. “I don’t expect that will be any different this year.”
Because the program is attracting more demand than it has capacity for, Barnes says the county is still using prioritization to help the kids who demonstrate the most need first. In the 2024–25 year, she says, 71% of kids served right now are from low-income families, 65% are children of color, and 30% speak a language other than English at home.
Nationwide, the Trump administration has challenged educational programs at all grade levels for considering race. Barnes says the county has worked with its legal team in response to national crackdowns.
“We can’t use race as a determining factor, but there are other things that we know that are a proxy for that in our county,” Barnes says. “So we look at income, for example, language, for example, as ways to get at our primary populations.”