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In a widely anticipated audit of Multnomah County’s Preschool for All program, released overnight Wednesday, County Auditor Jennifer McGuirk reported the program faces some challenges as it seeks to expand.
The program, which voters passed in 2020, aims to provide every preschooler in Multnomah County free care by 2030. The county estimates that meeting that goal will require 11,000 publicly funded seats—7,000 from converting private seats and 4,000 from expanding capacity.
But in the years since its passage, Preschool for All has been slow to ramp up participation as well as the number of seats and has struggled with underspending (“The Itsy Bitsy Project,” WW, Nov. 8, 2023). Those are problems McGuirk and her team highlighted in their audit, though they also found the program has done some good work bringing child care to priority, high-needs populations.
The audit, started in September 2023, comes as the program faces increased public scrutiny, including a recent survey by some of the city’s wealthiest businessmen testing voters’ appetite for repealing the tax. Preschool for All is funded by taxing 1.5% of income over $200,000 for joint filers ($125,000 for single filers) with another 1.5% on income over $400,000 for joint filers ($250,000 for single filers).
Most of the discussion in the audit falls into two categories: barriers to expanding the program and unclear communication from the county.
Back in 2020, Preschool for All communicated its plan for ramping up to universal child care. But in the early years, the program struggled to meet original targets. In 2022, it adjusted its goals, citing the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the child care industry, and created a more “realistic growth timeline.” Now, the county is meeting those revised goals, and expects to serve more children than it hoped in the upcoming school year.
But the auditor found that because of the adjusted targets, the program will serve about 7,500 fewer children than it would have if it had remained on target, and it will take two extra years to get enough seats for children in priority groups.
“Additionally, even though the plan always involved a ramp-up period, the slow process may have reduced community trust in the program,” the audit reads.
But on top of the moving goalposts, the auditor pointed to other risks for expansion. Many of those risks have to do with recruiting providers—to reach its 7,000-seat private conversion goal, the audit reveals the county must convert 80% of existing private seats to seats subsidized by Preschool for All. But of the about 840 sites that could be participating in Preschool for All, only 122—or 14% of them—are involved right now.
Why the holdup? The auditor found many consistencies with concerns expressed in a previous WW story in which potential providers said they were worried that partnering with the county would strip them of their agency as business owners.
“Only limited program and financial information is available to providers before they apply,” the audit reads. “We also heard concerns about whether the program funding is sufficient to cover business expenses and whether providers will receive enough support to serve children with disabilities.”
The audit also confirmed some fears potential providers expressed, noting that some said the funding the county provided was not enough to support some of its programming requirements. For example, the county requires participating preschools to accept all applicants it refers, meaning students with disabilities who require extra support might be assigned to preschools where providers didn’t feel prepared to accommodate them.
The county has also rejected 87 preschools over the past three years, with more than half denied during the first step of application. Prospective providers are scored on a number of factors related to operations and their experience serving priority children, and those below a cutoff score are rejected. Others lacked facilities that met county standards or weren’t prepared to open in time. In general, most rejected providers did not apply again.
The audit recommends the county take steps to communicate more effectively with providers about the requirements for Preschool for All participation, and also to work with those who aren’t yet in the system. It also asks for more transparency for families, especially during the application process, and broader communication around underspending. (In fiscal year 2024, the program once again underspent its budget dramatically.)
In a letter responding to the county’s audit, County Chair Jessica Vega Pederson agreed with most of its 16 recommendations. There was some conflict, however, around the prioritization process.
During its ramp-up period, the county has received about double the number of applicants for whom it has seats available. Because of that, the county communicated to voters in 2020 that it would first prioritize children from at-need groups. The biggest weight is given to low-income families, then to children who experience homelessness or foster care, and then to those who have disabilities or speak a language other than English at home.
The audit found Preschool for All was doing good work trying to prioritize its most high-needs groups. The wide majority of applications came from and offers and enrollments were made to families with children in priority groups. “So far, Preschool for All has been successful at enrolling children from its current priority groups,” the audit reads. “It has also reached many families from its current priority groups to apply to the program.”
But one of the audit’s most urgent recommendations was that the county develop a process to verify the accuracy of application answers given by prospective preschoolers’ families. “At a minimum, the process should verify income with documentation, since income is the highest weighted and is straightforward to document,” it reads.
The county chair wasn’t on board. In her April 3 response to McGuirk, Vega Pederson said it was too late to verify information for the upcoming 2025–26 application cycle and that the county would only commit to “reviewing this recommendation further.”
“Requiring verification of application data beyond the eligibility criteria contradicts the principles of universal preschool,” Vega Pederson wrote. “The addition of further verification requirements may create undue barriers, particularly for priority groups, and significantly slow down the application process. It may also increase administrative burden and cost, requiring the storage of unnecessary sensitive data and an increase in administrative staff.”
McGuirk, for her part, was not impressed with the response. There appears to have been some back and forth between the county and its auditor, as county staff didn’t want to explain how kids were chosen for limited slots, fearing that revealing that information would allow families to game the system. “Management expressed concern that people could claim to belong to priority groups when, in actuality, they do not,” McGuirk wrote in an April 7 response letter.
But McGuirk wrote she’d include the information about how the county picks applicants because “limiting information about priority weighting is not a way to reduce the potential for fraud.”
“Not having a detective control is a disservice to families who cannot afford preschool and need access to Preschool for All, and to taxpayers who voted for Preschool for All with the understanding that it would prioritize communities that have historically had less access to preschool,” McGuirk wrote. “I disagree that Preschool for All staff could not implement a mechanism by May 1 to verify that applicants are accurately representing that they meet the program’s income criteria for prioritization.”