Free pre-K is on the table for every 4-year-old in Baltimore City, giving parents a reprieve as the price of child care soars — even if it sometimes means accepting an open spot outside of a family’s neighborhood school.

Baltimore City Public Schools is ahead of the curve in offering what effectively amounts to universal prekindergarten for 4-year-olds, as the district has done for at least a decade. Surrounding school systems don’t offer nearly as many as the city’s 4,000 full-day spots, and public pre-K in the rest of Maryland is largely limited to low-income and high-needs children.

That’s supposed to change in the coming years thanks to a boost in funding from education reform legislation called the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future. It calls for massive expansion of full-day prekindergarten programs to serve all low-income 3- and 4-year-olds.

But the city prioritized pre-K long before Blueprint money started flowing, said Rachel Hise, the executive director of the board that oversees Blueprint’s implementation.

“I think they recognize that if they get students into high-quality programming earlier that they’re going to be better prepared for kindergarten and students won’t be coming into kindergarten as far behind,” Hise said.

While the city has never run out of spots, families aren’t guaranteed a place at their preferred school, or even the school their child will attend for kindergarten. The city moved this year to a new online enrollment system designed to place more vulnerable students at their preferred schools, and in the process shut some less-needy families out of their popular neighborhood pre-Ks. The growing pains at one of the state’s most established pre-K programs signal the kinds of challenges in store for other school districts working toward the goals of the Blueprint.

By next school year, school districts in the rest of the state are supposed to have free pre-K for 4-year-olds whose families earn less than 300% of the federal poverty level, or about $90,000 for a family of four. They’re also supposed to have spots for 4-year-olds with disabilities or eligible for English language services, regardless of income level. Many counties already do.

In future years, they’ll need to find seats, either in public schools or at private providers, for all 4-year-olds, with parents picking up some or all of the cost on a sliding scale.

Beyond Baltimore City, at least two other counties offer pre-K to all their 4-year-olds but on a much smaller scale. Garrett County in Western Maryland had filled 168 of its 188 seats pre-K 4 seats as of Aug. 21 and has been adding spots as demand grows over the years. Somerset County on the Eastern Shore has used state grants to offer pre-K to all 4-year-olds, who number fewer than 200.

As of Wednesday, the city had enrolled 3,489 pre-K students, representing about 87% of the city’s available spots. That number is expected to fluctuate ahead of the official student count at the end of September, said Brandon Tilghman, director of enrollment, choice and transfers for city schools. In 10 years, he’s never seen more students enroll than there were spots.

“Our supply of seats has never quite matched the demand for our early learners,” Tilghman said. “But certainly that number is trending upward.”

Technically, Baltimore doesn’t have a pre-K seat for every 4-year-old who lives in the city, but there are families each year who choose to keep their kids at home, send them to family members or enroll them in private pre-K programs.

Like the rest of the state, city schools must still give low-income and high-needs families priority when they enroll. It’s a tricky process that’s still being refined.

Baltimore parents used to go directly to schools to register their children for pre-K, with one enrollment period for high-needs families and a second for others. This year, all families could enroll online during two registration windows in late spring and early summer that were open to all city residents. Classrooms are capped at 20 students each.

“There wasn’t that fear of first-come, first-serve — if I don’t get there on day one, am I going to lose my seat?” Tilghman said. “It was a little bit more convenient for our families.”

This year, families could list up to five schools for their child to attend. Then, the computerized system automatically considered a family’s priority status, alongside factors like where a family lives and if a student has an older sibling at a preferred school when making placements.

The ranking system meant more families could apply at more in-demand schools.

If a school had room after all high-needs families were placed across both rounds, other families received their offers.

“This allows us to kind of take our really wonderful and strong pre-K that we have at all of these schools, all these classrooms, and kind of open it up to any and everyone in the city,” said Crystal Francis, executive director of early learning for Baltimore City Public Schools.

But the new system wasn’t without its disappointments, as some schools are far favored by families over others.

At the beginning of the summer, Cynthia Keenan planned to enroll her 4-year-old daughter at Medfield Heights Elementary, where she would be zoned to attend kindergarten in 2025. But she had steep competition for the school’s three classrooms. According to Tilghman, there were over 220 pre-K applications at Medfield Heights. Other popular schools included Roland Park, Hampstead Hill Academy and Mount Royal.

Keenan, who has lived in Medfield with her husband and their two children for seven years, listed Medfield as her top choice along with four other preferred schools. But in early June, she got news that her daughter had been waitlisted at all five schools.

The result was so unexpected that at first, Keenan assumed it was a system glitch.

“I’ve never heard of a kid whose parents tried to enroll them in the proper time-frame not getting to go,” she said.

Keenan tried again in the second round of enrollment and was met with more disappointing news: Her daughter had been wait-listed at her top two choices and denied admission at her bottom two schools. She was offered a spot at Park Heights Academy but Keenan was concerned about the school’s two-star rating on its state report card.

Ultimately, Keenan and her husband decided to send their daughter to Cardinal Shehan, a Catholic school affiliated with their church. Keenan will have to pay $7,200 for the school year, which does not include the cost of aftercare.

Still, Keenan said she appreciated how hard the city is working to place families and understands why situations like hers might happen.

“My husband and I firmly believe that every child deserves to have a high-quality education, not just our kids,” Keenan said. “It’s not gonna kill her to have to switch schools two years in a row. She’ll get over it. Kids are resilient.”

Tilghman said the school system is considering changes to the process, like sharing the number of available slots at each school and moving up the enrollment timeline so parents have more time in the summer to figure out alternatives if they don’t get their preferred placement.

Still, 89% of pre-K families this year matched with their first choice, Tilghman said. Only 5% of families did not receive a placement with any of their five choices after both rounds of enrollment, and each of those families got an individualized follow-up with the school system to try to find them a spot, Tilghman said.

City schools will use the data from the central enrollment system to predict demand for next school year and get parents thinking about early learning sooner.

“We find that some of our families don’t start thinking about pre-K until their child is 4,” Francis said. “And I would love for families to start thinking about pre-K when their child is like 2.”

About the Education Hub

This reporting is part of The Banner’s Education Hub, community-funded journalism that provides parents with resources they need to make decisions about how their children learn. Read more.