‘Education Based on Income’: Cambridge’s Child Care Puzzle

Updated October 14, 2025, at 3:59 a.m.

When Eugenia B. Schraa Huh ’04 was deciding whether or not to have a third child in Cambridge, child care was top of mind.

“Just thinking about how hard it was to get coverage for my children — particularly when they were very young babies or 1, 2 years old — was absolutely a factor in deciding not to have a third child,” Schraa Huh, who is running for Cambridge School Committee, said. “It’s just a ton of work.”

Parents in the City of Cambridge previously spent years on waitlists for child care and preschool programs that could cost up to $50,000 annually. The City tried to put an end to parents’ nightmares two years ago by launching universal preschool — the Cambridge Preschool Program — for all 4-year-olds and some 3-year-olds.

Cambridge has spared no expense to make childcare programs widely accessible in the city, investing more than $35 million in the city’s preschool and after-school programs this fiscal year. Now, parents of children age 4 or younger can apply for free childcare programs offered by the city’s public schools, the Department of Human Services Programs, and city-funded tuition to programs run by private providers.

Despite Cambridge’s efforts, parents and local politicians say that some families are still falling through the cracks. Limited hours pose a barrier for some families, while others seek to leverage preschool placements to land a spot in Cambridge’s most coveted elementary schools.

Together, the extensive options and unexpected constraints fuel a culture of intense strategization around preschool enrollment that often makes the top-ranked programs inaccessible for low-income families.

“You need a lot of resources,” Cambridge parent Carolina Reyes said. “And anybody faces a money issue.”

The Cambridge Ellis School, located at 80 Trowbridge St, is an exclusive private preschool in Cambridge. Some parents pay up to $40,000 for the school’s toddler program to get preferential admission to the free four-year-old program. By Grace E. Yoon

Putting the Pieces Together

With more than 50 preschool and after-school programs subsidized by the city, Cambridge parents have a plethora of child care options to choose from — at least on paper.

Parents can apply to 13 public school programs, six DHSP programs, and more than 30 private providers, all in one application. Families rank their top choices and then are lotteried into a program, with priority given to low-income families, defined as those living at or below 65 percent of the area’s median income.

“That match happens in two batches,” Cheryl A. Ohlson, director of the CPP, said. She added that low-income families “get run through first — so essentially, they have a greater likelihood of receiving one of their higher choices.”

All four-year-old Cambridge children are eligible for free preschool, before they transition to kindergarten at age five. Cambridge then offers after-school programs from kindergarten through eighth grade.

But as low-income working parents must account for the lack of extended day programming — services that last until the evening — at certain preschools, their options shrink. Additionally, the city only subsidizes six-and-a-half hours of childcare per day at each of the preschools, except for families designated as low income, which parents say adds a barrier to enrollment in certain programs.

“The way that CPP really tries to sort of correct for that is by the way we do matching and the way we address our priority families in particular,” Ohlson said.

Last year, 44 percent of the 795 children enrolled in CPP were listed as low-income. According to city data, 89 percent of priority families and 75 percent of non-priority families were matched with their first choice preschool program.

Priority families with preschool children can secure full-year service and extended day programming fully subsidized by the city, with other CPP families paying on a sliding scale based on household size and family income.

DHSP also funds five “community providers” which offer after-school care for school-aged children five days a week, spending nearly one million dollars on scholarships for low-income families. Parents who enroll their children in DHSP after-school programs pay anywhere from a few dollars to several hundred, based on a sliding scale that considers family income, household size, and the number of days the student is enrolled each week.

“I think the biggest issue is still access,” Cambridge parent Amanda Beatty said. “We still have around 200 kids on the waitlist, and that is too many.”

Other programs have much less extensive options.

CPS preschools — popular among families for their extensive language immersion programs and preferential elementary school enrollment — do not provide any extended stay options. These programs also follow the public school system calendar, which means that families must find other child care during school holidays and summers.

The Cambridge Amigos School — one of the few public schools that offers a bilingual program for students — is one of the most popular schools in the district. By Daniel Morales Rosales

Despite the drawbacks, many parents still choose to keep their children in CPS preschools. Elysse Magnotto-Cleary, who had a child in the Tobin Montessori preschool program, decided to stay at Tobin to save their spot in the elementary school.

“We were told we could apply to a different program with longer hours, but if we did that, we would have lost our spot at Tobin,” she said.

Magnotto-Cleary sought to take advantage of Cambridge’s matriculation policy that ensures all CPS preschool students can enroll at the corresponding elementary school. Siblings also receive preferential treatment in admissions to some programs to avoid forcing families to do multiple drop-offs.

“You really have to get a foot in the door, because then once you get one kid in then your next kid can get sibling enrollment priority,” Cambridge parent Doug O’Regan said. “That’s a huge deal.”

For Magnotto-Cleary, the trade-off was worth it.

“We were looking at sort of the overall well-being and educational experience of our child, and decided not to pull from Tobin, because then we would have lost our spot at the elementary school,” she said.

Magnotto-Cleary is not the only parent who has been forced to choose between present convenience and a future at one of Cambridge’s most popular schools. Structural inequities often prevent low-income families from capitalizing on their preferential position in the preschool admissions process.

Magnotto-Cleary recognized that other families may not be able to sacrifice the extended day option — especially given a Massachusetts law that prohibits the state from transporting non-school-aged children to after-school programs.

“This policy change essentially creates differential education based on income,” she said. “Unless you have a parent or a caretaker who can pick up the child in the middle of the day, can you easily attend this program?”

Cambridge City spokesperson Jeremy H. Warnick wrote in a statement that “like any system where there are options, there are pros and cons to different preschool program models.”

“Parents weigh the value of full-day care vs. guaranteed matriculation for their family when choosing how to rank these two preschool models on their CPP application,” Warnick wrote.

By Victoria Chen

Finding the Right Fit

Income differences are not the only barrier to accessing Cambridge’s child care programs. Parents must account for confounding factors — like their children’s special education accommodations and their hopes for elementary school placement — as they navigate the child care system.

Loretta J. Haynes tried to get her grandson into a DHSP after-school program, but was left on the waitlist for more than a year because the city could not accommodate his individualized education plan at Fletcher Maynard Academy.

“That was a major problem, not just with myself, but with other parents that I know of who could not get their child in the after-school program because of similar problems,” she said. “He’s eight years old, he is mildly on the spectrum, and at the time that he came to FMA, was having a lot of challenges.”

Ellen M. Semonoff, assistant city manager for Human Services, said that families applying for accommodations often have to wait longer before they are admitted.

“It has been challenging for families with children with special needs to get through the application process sometimes,” Semonoff said. “We have not always been able to hire the staff as quickly as we would have wished.”

Semonoff also added that this year’s budget provided funds for the city to bring on another staff member to work on this issue.

Whether their children have special education needs or not, Cambridge parents are often forced to strategize carefully to take full advantage of the public child care system — effectively curating their children’s school trajectory during their earliest years.

O’Regan, the Cambridge parent, tried to set up his son for eight years at Tobin by applying for the corresponding preschool when his son turned 3 — before the free preschool for 4-year-olds kicked in.

“If you don’t get in in the 3-year-old program there,” he said, “you’re basically not going to get in there until at least elementary school.”

“It’s a very strategic thing,” O’Regan added.

The complex child care system has led some parents to shell out thousands of dollars in hopes of securing placement at the city’s top free programs. Parents at the Cambridge-Ellis school will pay up to $40,000 for a spot in the school’s toddler program — making it easier for them to matriculate into the school’s free four-year-old program. The parents leverage Cambridge-Ellis’ “continuity of care” policy, which provides students priority registration to stay at their current site in subsequent years.

The Cambridge-Ellis School. By Grace E. Yoon

“I think we have seen an increase in some applications to our lower ages, because those families, when their child turns 4 and they’re eligible for CPP, they want the Cambridge-Ellis program, they want the Cambridge-Ellis curriculum,” Andy Griswold, director of finance and facilities of the Cambridge-Ellis school, said. “They want to be in so that they can get one of our continuity of care spots.”

Even with Cambridge’s child care system’s complexities and inequities, parents still say that universal preschool has been “a blessing.”

“They went to this new model to offer free preschool for all four-year-olds, which I think is amazing and has been like, genuinely, like, a blessing in our lives,” Cambridge parent Lindsey R. Encinas said.

City Councilor Sumbul Siddiqui, who helped lead the charge to institute universal preschool, said that the new program requires time but will continuously improve.

“Whatever policy decision you make, there sometimes will be some challenges in the implementation,” she said. “At the same time, we have to do better and keep talking.”

Corrections: October 14, 2025

A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Cambridge only subsidizes six-and-a-half hours of childcare per day at each of its public preschools. In fact, the city does subsidize additional time for families considered low-income.

A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Cambridge fully subsidizes tuition for Department of Human Services Programs preschools for priority families during the school day and year. In fact, priority families with preschool children can secure full-year service and extended day programming fully subsidized by the city.

A previous version of this article incorrectly referred to Andy Griswold as director of the Cambridge-Ellis School. In fact, Griswold is the school’s director of finance and facilities.

—Staff writer Diego García Moreno can be reached at diego.garciamoreno@thecrimson.com.

—Staff writer Summer E. Rose can be reached at summer.rose@thecrimson.com.