Multnomah County, Oregon is once again searching for licensed preschool providers to expand its free universal pre-K program, a recurring challenge that has dogged one of the country's most ambitious local early-childhood initiatives since it launched four years ago.
The county's Preschool & Early Learning Division is recruiting new provider sites to take on Preschool for All slots, likely for the 2026-2027 school year. The program, known as PFA, offers tuition-free preschool to every 3- and 4-year-old in the county regardless of family income. The goal is to eventually serve all 14,000 to 16,000 preschool-age children in the county by the early 2030s. The program started in fall 2022 with about 600 children.
Voters created PFA in November 2020, when Measure 26-214 passed with nearly 64% support. It is funded by a personal income tax surcharge on high earners: 1.5% on individual income above $125,000 and an additional 1.5% above $250,000, with higher thresholds for joint filers. That tax has generated more revenue than anyone expected, bringing in roughly $150 to $200 million annually against an original projection of $118 million per year. The result has been a growing fund balance sitting largely unspent while thousands of children remain on the outside of a program designed for all of them.
The bottleneck has never been money. It has been providers. Oregon lost an estimated 20 to 25 percent of its licensed childcare capacity during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, and the pool of sites qualified to meet PFA's quality standards has not recovered fast enough to absorb available funding. The county requires participating providers to maintain lower child-to-teacher ratios, follow curriculum requirements, and pay educators significantly above market rate, all worthwhile standards that also make it harder to bring new sites on quickly.
The program has drawn scrutiny from the Multnomah County Auditor's office and local media over its slow enrollment ramp-up and administrative costs. As covered in [earlier reporting on the program's expansion push](../articles/multnomah-county-pushes-to-expand-free-preschool-for-all-3-and-4-year-olds), provider recruitment has consistently been identified as the primary obstacle standing between PFA's tax revenue and the children it was designed to serve.
The county is also asking newly selected providers to help refine how the program operates as it scales, a sign that PFA is still working out details even as it approaches its sixth year. Providers can include both childcare centers and family-based home providers, with priority given to expanding capacity in historically underserved communities rather than adding slots in neighborhoods that already have options.
For the roughly 815,000 residents of Multnomah County, which includes Portland, the practical stakes are straightforward: formal preschool in the region costs more than $15,000 per year per child on the private market, putting it out of reach for many families even when they earn too much to qualify for other subsidies. Whether this latest recruitment round brings the program meaningfully closer to its universal promise depends on how many qualified providers step forward.
