Thanks to Abigail Seldin, My AI assistant

California's Free Pre-K Shockwave—and the Survival Plan for Non-Public Schools

Tim Seldin

President @ The Montessori Foundation | Montessori Teacher Educator

February 19, 2026

Where have all the four-year-olds gone?

By Tim Seldin | The Montessori Foundation | February 2026

America is in the middle of a childcare affordability crisis, and it is colliding with something that is just as real: early childhood education is expensive to do well, and the economics are fragile even in the best of times.

That is the national context. Now here is why California matters—and why leaders far beyond California's borders should be paying attention.

California is one of the first large states to push a "universal" public preschool year (Transitional Kindergarten, or TK) all the way into the public K–12 system, making it available to essentially every four-year-old whose birthday falls within the enrollment window. The intent is admirable: reduce costs for families and expand access to early education. But when a free public option expands quickly inside a well-funded system, it doesn't simply add seats. It reshapes the entire market—especially for private preschools and non-public schools that also serve infants, toddlers, and three-year-olds.

If you are a Montessori leader, a private school head, or an early childhood director, you are not reading this as an abstract policy question. You are reading it as enrollment numbers, staffing decisions, and monthly payroll.

Two Stories That, Together, Tell the Whole Picture

Two bodies of reporting help us see what is happening from both the ground level and the research level.

The first is a series of deeply reported California stories—from CalMatters, KQED MindShift, and The Hechinger Report—showing what the TK expansion looks like on the ground: empty classrooms, shrinking four-year-old enrollment, and directors who think about closing "every single day."

The second is an international analysis from The Economist (November 5, 2025) using Quebec's universal childcare system as a cautionary case study. Quebec created what researchers call a rare "policy experiment at scale" when it introduced heavily subsidized universal childcare in 1997. The findings are nuanced and important: universal childcare can improve affordability and increase maternal employment—real wins—but when quality and workforce stability lag behind scale, child outcomes can suffer in ways that persist for years.

The message from both stories is the same: you can expand access and still harm the ecosystem that working families rely on—unless the system is designed with extraordinary care.

What California Changed, in Plain English

California's "universal TK" is not just another subsidy program. It embeds the free year for four-year-olds inside public schools, with major state funding and a statewide entitlement structure. The California Legislative Analyst's Office (LAO) has tracked this expansion closely, describing it as a multi-year rollout culminating in significant per-pupil funding increases and projecting a long-run annual cost of roughly $3 billion once fully scaled.

California LAO — "The 2025-26 Budget: Transitional Kindergarten": https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4968

For families, this matters enormously. In the CalMatters reporting, parents describe TK as saving them an entire year of childcare costs and giving their children a meaningful educational head start. That is real relief, and it deserves to be acknowledged.

But here is the structural consequence that is not obvious until you are actually running a school: when a free public option expands, four-year-olds leave private programs in large numbers—and four-year-olds are often the age group that makes the private early childhood budget work.

The Hidden Business Model Most People Never See

Most private early childhood programs survive through cross-subsidy. Infants and toddlers are expensive to care for well: ratios are low, staffing is heavy, and turnover is costly in every sense. Four-year-olds, while still needing skilled educators, are typically less expensive per child because they are more independent and ratios are often more favorable.

In many programs, the four-year-old classroom quietly generates the financial margin that keeps infant and toddler rooms viable.

When TK siphons away the four-year-olds, the budget doesn't just tighten—it can collapse.

The CalMatters reporting (February 17, 2026) captures this with painful specificity. A provider in Elk Grove, California who once maintained waitlists now has empty classrooms because families are choosing free TK. She has not broken even in months and told the reporter she thinks about closing "every single day." In San Ramon, another provider watched her four-year-old enrollment drop from 24 children to just one. She eventually closed entirely, eliminating dozens of licensed childcare spaces from her community.

Full CalMatters report: https://calmatters.org/politics/2026/02/newsom-legacy-early-childhood/

Los Angeles County: An Early Warning Signal

The pattern in individual programs is being replicated across entire counties. In Los Angeles, reporting tied to a UC Berkeley analysis found that from 2020 to 2024, 167 community pre-K centers closed or allowed their licenses to expire—erasing roughly 12,000 childcare slots.

The same reporting notes a troubling distributional pattern: the biggest gains in TK enrollment were often in wealthier areas, while community-based preschool capacity was shrinking in many lower-income neighborhoods.

The UC Berkeley Equity and Excellence in Early Childhood (E3C) brief frames this as a "pivot problem." As TK expands, preschools try to shift toward serving younger children, but the economics and staffing realities make that shift extremely difficult to execute at scale. Infant ratios, licensing requirements, and the true cost of quality care for the youngest children create barriers that many programs simply cannot overcome.

UC Berkeley E3C Brief — "Pre-K Pivot? How Preschools Shift to Younger Children in Los Angeles" (December 9, 2025): https://e3c.berkeley.edu/publications/pre-k-pivot-how-preschools-shift-younger-children-los-angeles

The Hechinger Report — "One state made preschool free. Then dozens of child care centers closed in its largest city" (December 8, 2025): https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-la-preschool/

This is the paradox leaders must hold in mind at the same time: you can expand preschool access for four-year-olds and simultaneously worsen the childcare crisis for infants and toddlers, because the providers who care for the youngest children are losing the older children who kept them financially afloat.

What the Quebec Research Actually Found—and Why It Matters

The Economist's November 2025 piece leans on Quebec because Quebec created something rare: a natural policy experiment at genuine scale. In 1997, the province introduced heavily subsidized universal childcare, and researchers could compare Quebec's outcomes to the rest of Canada across time. The findings are worth understanding carefully, because they are often misrepresented.

What the Research Shows

1. Workforce participation rose significantly. Economists Michael Baker, Jonathan Gruber, and Kevin Milligan (often cited as "BGM") found a large increase in maternal labor supply and a major shift into formal childcare. That is a genuine policy success if your goal is helping parents enter or remain in the workforce.

2. Child outcomes, on average, worsened on several measures in the early years. In their 2008 Journal of Political Economy study, BGM found that children showed worse outcomes on measures including aggression, hyperactivity, motor-social skills, and illness—alongside changes in parenting stress and parental well-being. This was not a small or marginal finding.

3. The negative effects persisted into adolescence and beyond. In a 2019 follow-up study published in the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, the same researchers reported that negative effects on noncognitive outcomes persisted into school age, and that cohorts exposed to the early Quebec program showed worse health, lower life satisfaction, and higher crime rates in later years.

Academic sources:

• Baker, Gruber, Milligan (2008, Journal of Political Economy): https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/591908 (paywall; access via university library)

• Baker, Gruber, Milligan (2019, AEJ: Economic Policy): https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/pol.20170603 (paywall; accessible summary at NBER)

• NBER Digest summary: https://www.nber.org/digest/jun06/canadas-universal-childcare-hurt-children-and-families (free)

What does this mean? It does not mean childcare is harmful. It means this: large-scale systems can cause developmental harm when quality, workforce stability, and relational continuity are not protected as the system expands. Even The Economist's own letters section (November 20, 2025) emphasized this distinction—the critical variable is quality, not universality itself.

The Economist Letters — "Does universal child care harm children?" (November 20, 2025): https://www.economist.com/letters/2025/11/20/does-universal-child-care-harm-children (subscription required)

And that distinction matters enormously for Montessori leaders, because it lines up with what we have always understood: for young children, relationships are not a nicety. They are the intervention.

Why the Classic "High-Quality Program" Studies Look Different

When advocates argue for universal preschool, they rightly cite the landmark American studies that showed substantial long-term benefits. But those studies describe something quite specific.

The Perry Preschool Program (HighScope Perry) was small, targeted, and intensive. Economist James Heckman and colleagues estimated annual social rates of return in the 7–10% range—meaning that every dollar invested yielded roughly seven to ten dollars in long-run social benefits through improved educational attainment, employment, health, and reduced crime.

Heckman et al. (NBER Working Paper): https://www.nber.org/papers/w15471 (free)

The Abecedarian Project began even earlier—at infancy—and was highly intensive: low ratios, strong curriculum design, and comprehensive family supports. Follow-up studies decades later show better educational attainment, higher college attendance, and stronger adult employment among participants.

Abecedarian follow-up studies: https://abc.fpg.unc.edu/follow-up-studies/ (free)

These programs were not cheap universal childcare. They were expensive, relational, carefully staffed models that prioritized quality above all else. They show what is possible when relationships and developmental depth come first.

The honest synthesis for school leaders: universal access can help families, but outcomes depend entirely on design, workforce stability, and quality controls that are genuinely difficult to maintain at scale—especially for infants and toddlers.

Four Real Dangers California Is Facing Right Now

Danger 1: Losing Infant and Toddler Capacity When private centers close, the youngest children lose seats—because the public system is not structured to serve them. This is exactly the pattern in Los Angeles County: private capacity shrank while public TK grew. The children who suffer most are the ones nobody is counting.

Danger 2: The Illusion of "Universal" When Schedules Don't Match Real Life TK typically runs on a school-day model. Wraparound care and aftercare vary widely by district. Families who need full-day, year-round coverage can find themselves in a patchwork—even when their four-year-old has a "free seat." CalMatters documents these practical gaps extensively.

Danger 3: Destabilizing the Early Childhood Workforce When private programs lose revenue, they reduce staff or close. When they close, skilled teachers often scatter into public systems that may offer better benefits and pay. The result can be higher turnover in the private early childhood sector precisely where young children need consistency most.

Danger 4: A Slow-Motion Shakeout of Non-Public Early Childhood If free TK becomes the default for four-year-olds and reimbursement structures for younger ages do not cover the true cost of quality care, the market will consolidate or contract. Leaders will experience this as fewer viable standalone early childhood programs—and fewer choices for families who want something different.

KQED MindShift — "As Public Transitional Kindergarten Thrives, Child Care Centers Are Closing" (December 8, 2025): https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/66012/as-public-transitional-kindergarten-thrives-child-care-centers-are-closing

What Private and Montessori Schools Can Actually Do

This is where we stop describing the storm and start talking about the ship.

1. Stop Competing with "Free." Compete with "Workable." You cannot out-discount a $0 price tag. If your message is "we are better than TK," many families will hear, "we are asking you to spend $18,000 to prove a point."

Instead, position your program around what working families actually still need: reliable full-day coverage, predictable aftercare, school-break and summer continuity—a schedule that lets parents keep their jobs without scrambling every few weeks. Make this concrete, not aspirational: exact hours, exact calendars, exact guarantees.

2. Build Wraparound Programs That Feel Like School, Not Storage If TK is taking the core four-year-old seat, your strategic opportunity is the hours around TK. But wraparound cannot look like a holding pen if you want families to invest in it. Design it like a prepared environment: practical life in the afternoon, purposeful outdoor time, art and music, social play with adult coaching, calm routines, consistent staffing. In many communities, this is precisely where private schools can become essential infrastructure rather than optional luxuries.

3. Treat Infant and Toddler Expansion as a Major Strategic Initiative The CalMatters and Berkeley reporting make clear why "we'll just add infants" often fails: staffing costs and licensing requirements are substantial, and infant ratios make the economics unforgiving. If you want to expand your 0–3 program, do it with sober math: a realistic pro forma that includes true wages and benefits, recruitment costs, paid planning time, and turnover risk. If you cannot pay and retain excellent caregivers, do not expand until you can. The youngest children pay the price for instability.

4. Pursue District Partnerships Before Districts Come Looking Elsewhere CalMatters quotes advocates recommending that districts partner with private centers to offer childcare outside TK hours. Do not wait for that invitation. Propose partnerships proactively—for aftercare, holiday coverage, summer programs, enrichment blocks, and transportation solutions where feasible. The goal is to shift from "we are being replaced" to "we are part of the community's childcare infrastructure."

5. Rebuild Your Value Proposition with Specificity Families will still choose private programs for three-, four-, and five-year-olds when they genuinely understand what they are getting—and when the program fits their family's life. Vague claims will not do it. Be specific: continuity of relationships across years; mixed-age communities where children learn from one another; independence developed through real, meaningful work; executive function built through self-directed activity; social-emotional growth supported intentionally by educators who know your child deeply.

If you are Montessori, say Montessori things—but in parent language. Not "early academics," but "deep foundations." Not "the absorbent mind," but "calm, capable, confident children who love learning."

6. Build Scenario Plans for Four-Year-Old Volatility Assume four-year-old enrollment volatility is now a permanent feature of the landscape, not a temporary disruption. Do not budget as if last year will return. Run scenarios: what happens if four-year-old enrollment drops 20 percent? Thirty-five percent? Fifty percent? What costs can flex without harming quality? What space can be repurposed? What staffing schedules can be redesigned? This is not a marketing problem. It is a structural challenge that belongs in board meetings and strategic planning.

7. Advocate for Ecosystem Design, Not Nostalgia California chose a public-school delivery model for universal access. That is not going to reverse. But the state can still protect a mixed ecosystem through smarter funding and partnership incentives. The UC Berkeley E3C brief explicitly emphasizes the need to expand high-quality options for

infants and toddlers as TK grows. Leaders can use that framing to advocate for policies that preserve 0–3 supply and community-based care.

If you advocate, advocate for things that solve real problems: funding structures that support wraparound partnerships; subsidy and reimbursement rates that reflect actual cost of quality care; incentives that prevent the collapse of infant and toddler capacity across the state.

A Closing Thought for School Leaders

California is not proof that universal preschool is bad. It is proof that when you pull one lever in early childhood, the whole machine moves.

The same policy can be a genuine blessing to families and a serious shock to providers. The same expansion can increase access and reduce capacity—depending entirely on which age group you serve, which community you're in, and whether the system was designed with the whole ecosystem in mind.

For non-public schools, the practical question is no longer, "How do we stop this?" It is: "How do we become essential in the new landscape?"

That means operational resilience, workforce stability, and a value proposition rooted in real family needs—not just ideals. It means building programs that are logistically workable, developmentally wise, and financially sustainable.

If we want children to thrive, "free" is not the finish line. Quality, stability, and relationships are.

Sources and Further Reading

All URLs verified as active in February 2026. Paywalled academic articles can be accessed through university libraries; NBER digest summaries are available free of charge.

California: On-the-Ground Impact

CalMatters — "Newsom achieved universal preschool. But at what cost to child care providers?" (Feb. 17, 2026) https://calmatters.org/politics/2026/02/newsom-legacy-early-childhood/

KQED MindShift — "As Public Transitional Kindergarten Thrives, Child Care Centers Are Closing" (Dec. 8, 2025) https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/66012/as-public-transitional-kindergarten-thrives-child-care-centers-are-closing

The Hechinger Report — "One state made preschool free. Then dozens of child care centers closed in its largest city" (Dec. 8, 2025) https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-la-preschool/

UC Berkeley E3C — "Pre-K Pivot? How Preschools Shift to Younger Children in Los Angeles" (Dec. 9, 2025) https://e3c.berkeley.edu/publications/pre-k-pivot-how-preschools-shift-younger-children-los-angeles

California LAO — "The 2025-26 Budget: Transitional Kindergarten" https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4968

The Economist and the Quebec Evidence

The Economist — "Universal child care can harm children" (Nov. 5, 2025) https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2025/11/05/universal-child-care-can-harm-children (subscription required)

The Economist Letters — "Does universal child care harm children?" (Nov. 20, 2025) https://www.economist.com/letters/2025/11/20/does-universal-child-care-harm-children (subscription required)

Baker, Gruber, Milligan (2008) — Journal of Political Economy https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/591908 (paywall; university library access)

Baker, Gruber, Milligan (2019) — American Economic Journal: Economic Policy https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/pol.20170603 (paywall; university library access)

NBER Digest — Summary of early Quebec findings (June 2006) https://www.nber.org/digest/jun06/canadas-universal-childcare-hurt-children-and-families (free)

High-Quality Program Evidence

Heckman et al. — "The Rate of Return to the HighScope Perry Preschool Program" (NBER) https://www.nber.org/papers/w15471 (free)

UNC FPG — Abecedarian Follow-Up Studies https://abc.fpg.unc.edu/follow-up-studies/ (free)

CrimeSolutions (OJP) — Abecedarian Project Profile https://crimesolutions.ojp.gov/ratedprograms/abecedarian-project (free)

Item 6 talked about flexing costs.  ECEA is proactively working with partnerships to decrease your costs.  We are going to schedule a meet up to talk through cost savings to consider for your program.  Join us and bring ideas that are helping you and your program!