Baltimore’s pre-K ‘dumpster fire’ is shutting some families out of neighborhood schools

One email nearly undid five years of planning.

Molly Garcia had been looking forward to free public pre-K since she got pregnant with her now 4-year-old son, August. She attended informational webinars years before it was her family’s turn to enroll and applied to the schools closest to her Federal Hill home days after registration opened for the fall.

None of it mattered. Her son wasn’t offered a spot in a Baltimore City Public School earlier this month, leaving Garcia to decide whether to wait as late as this summer for another chance or shell out $22,000 for another year of child care. It left her wondering whether her family would be in the same position when it’s time for her 1-year-old to go to school.

“That’s two years of day care costs we could apply to an imaginary third baby that we would desperately love to have,” Garcia said.

Baltimore has 4,100 prekindergarten spots for 4-year-olds across its public schools, more than enough to fit the 1,636 families who applied. But a complex school choice system allows families to select schools outside their neighborhood and gives first dibs to those who are low-income, need special education or are learning to speak English.

This year, it left 103 families with no guarantee of the free, walkable pre-K they’d banked on. If they don’t act soon, they could lose coveted private preschool spots, too.

Dissatisfaction with the process has quickly spread through parent Facebook groups, on which frustrated moms and dads said they were blindsided by not getting into their neighborhood schools. Complaints reached Baltimore City Councilmember Zac Blanchard, whose district includes popular South Baltimore schools such as Thomas Johnson Elementary/Middle and Federal Hill Preparatory Academy.

Blanchard said he didn’t hear about this issue once last year, but over the last two weeks he’s been approached at least 25 times. Of the “dumpster fires” he’s addressing right now, solving the pre-K problem is second only to public safety, Blanchard said.

He has 1- and 3-year-olds at home and lives a block and a half from Federal Hill Prep, which means he may soon face the same derailment. Blanchard said another year of $1,600-a-month payments “would suck” and that child care costs can come down particularly hard on families who don’t qualify for government help.

Maryland fully funds pre-K for certain students, including those whose parents make $99,000 or less to support a family of four. Families who make more than that are partially covered until their income reaches about $200,000.

Baltimore enrolls families above that threshold free and eats the cost, a huge draw for many middle-class parents. But state legislation known as the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future directs the city and other school systems to offer pre-K seats to low-income students and those with special learning needs first.

The city takes it a step further, allowing those students to go to pre-K anywhere they choose. This year, 76% of the families that got their first choice came from that group.

Blanchard said prioritizing certain kids’ placements would make sense only if the district didn’t have enough public pre-K seats for the families that want them. That’s the case in other districts but not Baltimore, which has had full-day public pre-K for nearly two decades.

“If you live two blocks from a school, your kid should be able to go to school there, the end. And that’s part of the point of living in the city,” Blanchard said. “This is not an outcome that we should be seeing when we have way more than enough seats citywide.”

At Thomas Johnson, for example, a third of seats went to students who don’t live within the school zone that determines which kids attend from kindergarten and up. At nearby Federal Hill Preparatory Academy, 68% of seats went to kids outside the school zone. Those schools also drew far more applicants than there were spots.

Baltimore City Public Schools spokesperson Sherry Christian said the district will work with families to get them into pre-K, “it just may not be their first choice.”

City Schools had to juggle nearly 350 more pre-K applications this spring as compared to last. Families can rank up to three schools on their applications. If they don’t get one of their top choices in the first round of placements, a waiting game begins: either for a preferred spot someone else turned down or an open seat at another school. If neither works out, they can reapply over the summer.

Demand is highest in areas of the city with highly rated schools, including Hampden.

Gabriela Calderon applied to three schools for her 4-year-old daughter. They topped the district’s list of the most popular programs this year. She knew spots were limited, but she was comforted by City Schools’ consistent messaging that 90% of families got a preferred spot last year.

Calderon’s daughter didn’t get one at first. Calderon knows three other families at her child care center that got the same news. She mentally prepared to keep paying for child care, which cost $4,000 a month for two kids.

“It’s not going to be the end of the world for our family,” she said. “But it is going to be another year that we’re going to pray that our water heater doesn’t break, that our ceiling doesn’t start leaking any moment.”

Calderon emailed the district, telling staff which schools her one-car household could make work. She was shocked that within the hour her daughter had a spot at Mount Royal Elementary/Middle School. It’s farther and less popular than her first choices “but still doable,” she said.

Garcia’s son was finally offered a spot Thursday, which she called a huge relief. He’ll enroll at Federal Hill Preparatory Academy, a win she thinks is the result of her “increasingly anxious emails” to school officials.

Garcia said all students deserve a good education. But she also thinks kids are entitled to attend schools in their neighborhoods.

“The zoned schools are on Zillow, attached to each house. It is a critical part of why people choose to live where they live,” Garcia said. “And, if Baltimore City cannot design a process that acknowledges this, then we’re in trouble.”

Correction: A caption in this story has been updated to correct the spelling of Neil Gavigan's name.

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.