Skip to main contentAfter a fiery summer warning from Gov. Tina Kotek, Multnomah County officials have been eager to show they’ve crafted a long-term, financially sound path forward for Preschool for All.
Much of the work that’s been publicized has been on the part of a technical advisory group, or TAG, composed of economists, a demographer and other business leaders. Notably, the group has so far determined the county has vastly overestimated how many seats it will need to ensure universal access to the program, and that has had striking implications for financial modeling.
But there’s another advisory group whose work in the wings is worth paying attention to. It’s the seven-member Program Advisory Group, or PAG. Composed of preschool providers and education experts, its members are tasked with answering how TAG-suggested financial changes to Preschool for All will affect the program’s implementation.
They matter because a bulk of the County Board of Commissioners is most concerned with the issues this advisory group is pondering. And the PAG holds different opinions than many TAG members.
The news in early December that financial projections indicate Preschool for All’s fund balance could surpass $1 billion by 2039 without adjustments, and stand at more than $2 billion by 2043, likely means at least some members of TAG will champion ideas for changing the tax model. (After all, some of TAG’s members include staunch critics of the current taxing mechanism.)
But much of a Wednesday PAG meeting was dedicated to scrutinizing some key assumptions that the research firm ECOnorthwest used in its modeling, particularly around forecasting the annual growth of costs for seat expenses and fixed expenses (think administrative and programmatic costs). While ECOnorthwest’s assumptions had these pegged at 4% and 3% per year, respectively, the bulk of the PAG was quick to say that those numbers felt too low.
PAG member Ingrid Anderson, a professor of practice in the College of Education and the College of Social Work at Portland State University, said national firm Child Care Aware forecasts 5.2% as the baseline for cost escalation in seats, the lowest number she said she could find from national sources. Dana Stiles, Portland Public Schools’ director of early learning, added that PPS has been working with a 6% increase assumption as it plans for staff salaries and increases there.
“I’d definitely make an argument for not harming ourselves by staying too low in our seat prices,” Anderson said.
But when it came time to offer up alternative numbers to the current assumptions, additional challenges arose, underscoring the difficulties Preschool for All will face as it tries to serve programs from small in-home businesses to big school district-based centers. Stiles mentioned PPS has to account for the pension system, something private businesses do not have to do. “For school districts or school staff, nearly every staff member is unionized, and so we have employee contracts that are different,” she said. “It is a substantial cost that we are not allowed to opt out of.”
Many PAG members expressed additional anxiety around data needed to support any sort of hard number they could recommend to commissioners. A couple noted they did not feel comfortable determining a rate of growth on feeling alone.
Labor concerns were top of mind for almost all PAG members in attendance, who noted that teacher turnover and a limited number of qualified employees could create challenges unless educators are given incentives to stay. Labor is the top expense across child care operations.
There were also concerns among PAG members that the county needed to offer more than two tiers of seat costs—currently at $17,532 per seat for six-hour school-year seats, and $25,008 for 10-hour full-year seats. Multiple providers said that those numbers can vary dramatically from child to child. Kids with disabilities, or those with behavioral or learning needs, require more support and more funding, they said. The costs depend on the acuity of need.
The PAG’s input matters because it is the commissioners, not the TAG, who will ultimately have decision-making power on changes to the universal child care program.
Commissioners care about implementation a lot, so much so that they’ve pumped the brakes on any changes to the tax until that piece is fleshed out. At an Aug. 21 meeting, they agreed to delay a conversation on indexing until they could understand the consequences.
“I strongly want an advisory board that will look at both the economic stability long term and what is the right tax structure,” Commissioner Meghan Moyer said then. “But that conversation cannot be void from the policy and implementation and the goals of universality of the program.”
The TAG is slated to finalize its recommendations to commissioners in February, after which the PAG will have about a month to translate what these recommendations mean in practice.
But if commissioners are expecting clear answers on how they should tackle the program, there are early indications they’ll be out of luck. There’s been internal turmoil between TAG members on best steps forward for the program, and the Wednesday meeting indicates the PAG will only further complicate the breadth of information commissioners receive.
Commissioners will also have to balance all of the advisory groups’ desires with the capacity of county staff. Interim preschool and early learning director Rachel Pearl told PAG members that calculating seat costs based on each students’ individual needs would be a “very difficult” task under the current Preschool for All structure.
“Proposing a third option that’s child specific is not how the program is set up at all, and will not work with our contract,” Pearl said. “I don’t want people to feel like that’s what we’re moving forward with. I want to be transparent about what in the current structure is possible.”
PAG members are anticipated to join TAG members at their upcoming Tuesday meeting to deliver feedback on the preliminary assumptions the TAG has approved for financial modeling of the program.
