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As Multnomah County increases the number of publicly subsidized preschool seats it offers, it has instituted a new policy to hold Preschool for All providers accountable for low enrollment and student application numbers.
The county says the policy is necessary as it looks to be a responsible steward of taxpayer dollars. It currently pays providers upwards of $25,000 per seat, and needs safeguards to ensure that money follows the kids.
With thousands of new seats came a need to spell out protocol around low enrollment, says county spokeswoman Alex Hasenstab.
“While the policy became official this year, ensuring funded seats are filled has always been a part of our work with providers,” she says. “This policy sets a new benchmark for ensuring funded seats serve the community while also establishing clearer expectations for providers and calls for additional support when enrollment challenges arise.”
The low enrollment policy, drafted in late 2025 and formalized in May, outlines seven steps Preschool for All may take to intervene at sites with low enrollment. The policy has a timeline that runs parallel to the program’s application window for families. (The Preschool for All application asks families to rank their preferred programs. It is not a free-for-all.) Preschool for All will use application data to determine if sites are on track to meet enrollment targets. Sites are flagged as low interest when they are on track to fill less than 80% of their seats or will have 10 or more unfilled seats.
If the problem persists for months with no resolution in sight, the policy gives the county’s Preschool and Early Learning Division the authority to take formal action at sites where seats go unfilled. The county could reduce contracted seats, reduce or deny payments for unfilled seats, deny expansion requests or, in a worst-case scenario, terminate contracts with providers “when significant concerns persist, the provider is unable to make progress, or other contract violations are present” the policy reads.
The policy arrives as Preschool for All is both expanding and receiving greater scrutiny.
In recent months, the county dramatically scaled up the number of free seats available to 3- and 4-year-olds. It is offering 7,100 seats for the upcoming year, almost double the 3,844 it offered this year. The county estimates it now contracts with about 180 providers, which operate about 350 sites, to offer Preschool for All’s services.
The policy also comes amid a delicate national scene. A long-brewing fraud scandal among child care centers in Minnesota last year influenced Gov. Tim Walz’s decision not to run for reelection and drew the eager attention of the Trump administration. Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services jumped on those allegations as it tried to freeze access to certain child care and family assistance funds in five states—California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and New York—citing widespread fraud and misused tax dollars. (It rescinded that $10 billion freeze recently, Reuters reported.)
Locally, former Preschool for All director Leslee Barnes resigned last July after a state audit found the preschool she owned had engaged in “wasteful spending” of dollars from Preschool Promise, a state program. As WW first reported, Barnes’ preschool had collected $833,494 in state funds from 2020 to 2023 to pay for 63 seats but enrolled students for just nine. She’s since been replaced by Danisa McLean, the county’s new preschool and early learning director.
The new policy offers providers several chances to rectify low enrollment.
Providers flagged for monitoring will be notified whether they are in one of three tiers of the county’s intervention model, with Tier 3 indicating the most cause for concern. In Tier 1, typically in April and May, the county notifies providers of low interest concerns and shares data. The provider will discuss any potential barriers with a preschool specialist. (The policy may also be used if a site experiences consistent vacancies or high unenrollment rates.)
A month after the window opens for families to apply for seats, typically in June, the county will prioritize moving sites with early application data that indicates low enrollment into the second tier. It will start by prioritizing preschools that would fill less than 50% of their seats, or ones where there would be 10 or more seats open. It will ultimately look at ones that are on track to fill less than 80% of seats.
In this tier, providers are asked to submit a family outreach plan. A template of the plan shared with WW asks providers to identify root causes and contributing factors for low enrollment (e.g., marketing, access to tours, and language accessibility). It then asks providers to outline the strategies they will take to improve those factors, and for support they need. The preschool specialist will provide feedback on the plan and check in every three to four weeks to provide updated data and feedback. A site can stay in the tier if the provider is seeing measurable improvement.
The final tier, Tier 3, comes after three months of consistent low interest (not including periods when Preschool for All applications are closed). Sites can be raised to this tier if enrollment and interest remain low, they see high placement decline rates (when families opt to go elsewhere), or the provider fails to implement a family outreach plan. In this stage, providers will be placed on support and monitoring plans alerting them of performance concerns and contractual compliance issues, with required actions for implementation.
If this falls through, Preschool for All leaders may resort to contract changes and seat reductions for offending sites.
Hasenstab declined to share how many of its roughly 180 providers have a site in Tiers 2 or 3 at this time. It’s a dynamic status that can change daily, Hasenstab says, and accurate numbers won’t be available until fall. But she confirms that seat reductions, payment changes, and contract amendments could occur as early as this fall.
The county announced in May it had received about 6,000 applications for its 7,100 seats. Hasenstab says it has received several hundred more in its secondary application period. There have been questions in recent months about how many seats the program will need to provide before it hits universality. Preliminary demographic data from an advisory group indicates it may be closer than expected to the final number.
Hasenstab says the county has put just over $100,000 toward its Preschool for All marketing budget for advertising across social media, radio and TriMet buses, and engaged with a strategic communications coach to improve outreach. It has also set up information sessions with 23 community partners, developed multilingual outreach materials, and printed more than 18,000 flyers for community distribution.
Providers may use a portion of their Preschool for All funding for marketing, she adds, as Preschool for All’s independent marketing is not targeted toward any specific preschool but the program as a whole.
“Preschool for All has always viewed family enrollment as a shared responsibility,” Hasenstab says. “Providers are, and always have been, expected to market their preschools and communicate what makes their individual programs unique to attract families.”
