Seattle's free and subsidized preschool program still has room for 600 kids

Seattle has expanded its program offering free and subsidized preschool to hundreds of families each school year, and there are currently about 600 open seats.

"We are still in the midst of doing a lot of outreach, informing the community that we have new classrooms," said Leilani Dela Cruz, Seattle's Early Learning Director. "We are trying to get into parts of the city that may not have had publicly funded preschool before."

The program is for 3- and 4-year-olds and aims to bring high-quality preschool to kids who might not otherwise have access. Most of the program’s classrooms are in Seattle’s south end and the Lake City area, which have historically had lower test scores and fewer high-quality preschools.

“We wanted to serve the highest-needs children first, even though our program is open to anyone,” Dela Cruz said. “We know where there is a higher concentration of [Black, Indigenous, and people of color] communities and low-income communities, so that’s one of the reasons we started in the south end.

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“It was a little bit of a mix of creating new preschool[s], but also bringing into the fold preschools that already existed but just may not have had as [many resources] to produce kindergarten readiness,” Dela Cruz added.

Tuition is on a sliding scale based on a family’s income, and about two-thirds of students attend for free.

Families can enroll children anytime as long as there’s still space.

Dela Cruz said initial data suggest that the program is particularly successful at helping Black kids and English-language learners gain the academic and social-emotional skills they’ll need for kindergarten, but less successful at preparing Latino students and students with individualized education programs.

“We’re trying to unpack how we can do better” for those kids, Dela Cruz said.

Dela Cruz said the plan is to add more classrooms downtown, in the Magnolia area, and in the University District next year.