Skip to main content
In a month, Multnomah County’s bid to provide subsidized preschool for all children by 2030 launches its inaugural year.
The program, which aims to provide preschool to 12,000 3- and 4-year-olds by 2030, is funded by a tax on high-income households that Multnomah County voters passed in 2020. The tax took effect Jan. 1, 2021.
That program set lofty goals: Flood the shrinking preschool landscape with more teachers, pay teachers a livable wage so they remain in the business, and provide quality care and education to every single preschooler across the county. That’s especially difficult when the city is hemorrhaging child care providers: Between January 2021 and May 2022, the number of licensed preschool providers in Multnomah County dropped by more than one-third, from 1,242 to about 800.
The program will be scaled up in the next decade, at which point the county aims to have capacity for the estimated 12,000 families who might want free preschool. While that’s still the goal, county officials say that by next year they hope to have capacity for only 1,100 children. At that rate, the program would not serve 12,000 children until 2050.
Chris Fick, chief of staff for Multnomah County Commissioner Jessica Vega Pederson, who championed the measure, says 20% of preschool providers shuttered during the pandemic and have not reopened since. “So we recalibrated our goals to 1,100 for next year. We will try to exceed that goal—as we did with this year’s revamped goal,” Fick says. “But we’re in a good position to beat that goal by a considerable amount.”
Here’s what we know about the 687 kids who will help launch the program and the facilities that will care for them come September.
How many families applied? 1,113
How many youngsters were accepted? Six hundred eighty-seven 3- and 4-year-olds will report to preschool next month, free of charge. The county will reimburse each provider $15,600 or $21,840 a year per child, depending on the duration of care.
Who are the families that accepted spots?
34% of the families have incomes below or equal to the federal poverty level for a family of four. (That comes to $27,000 a year.)
75% are BIPOC families.
36% of the families speak a primary language that is not English.
Where are the facilities?
North Portland: 4
Northeast Portland: 14
Northwest Portland: 2
Southeast Portland: 22
Gresham: 6
What kind of facilities are they?
In-home provider: 24
Child care center: 14
In a school: 10
