Maryland families with annual incomes between three and six times the federal poverty line will pay for pre-K on a new sliding scale starting next fall.

The state board of education voted unanimously Tuesday to cap pre-K tuition contributions for families earning between around $83,000 and $166,000 each year at seven percent of their annual income.

The new payment system, adopted to align with the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future goal of expanding pre-K access state wide, splits families in this middle-tier income group into five levels. Families on the lower-earning end will pay less than $100 per month for their four-year-old’s pre-K attendance.

Laura Weeldreyer, executive director of the child care advocacy nonprofit Maryland Family Network, said she’s enthusiastic about pre-K expansion – and this latest statewide step to increase access.

But she also says there are still many details to consider with implementing a sliding scale system.

“The operational side of a sliding scale is really complicated,” she said.

For example, under the new system, public school systems will be required to collect tuition for families in this “tier two” sliding scale group — and for any family that earns even more.

“Public school systems provide a free service, they're not normally charging people,” Weeldreyer said. “So, are they equipped to collect tuition?”

Weeldreyer also said that families could face higher costs and more confusing barriers because of the disconnect between the pre-K and child care sectors. The state’s Child Care Scholarship currently offsets costs for families in that industry.

“But right now there is no alignment between the child care scholarship and the sliding scale for pre-K,” Weeldreyer said. “So if you are a parent who has a two-year-old and a four-year-old, this could be really, really confusing and really, really expensive, because they're siloed systems that don't acknowledge each other.”

State board of education member Joshua Michael raised the same concern in Tuesday’s meeting. Shayna Cook, the assistant state superintendent for the division of early childhood, said connecting these systems would be “extremely difficult, given the different funding streams and the different requirements.”

“There are some significant administrative hurdles that we'll need to overcome to achieve that vision,” Cook said.

Michael said it’s the board's job to figure out how to overcome those hurdles.

“When we're thinking about building an early learning system that is serving children and families, we have to tackle these bureaucratic challenges and figure it out,” he countered. “We've got to get to a solution, or we're going to create these broken systems that just aren't working.”

Cook said families will be able to access both the child care scholarship and the pre-K sliding scale, depending on their income and criteria. But the child care funds would only cover costs outside of the 6.5-hour pre-K school day.

Weeldreyer also worries that the new payment system could harm private child care businesses — especially if local school districts decide to cover in-school pre-K tuition costs for all families.

“Child care can't compete with that,” she said. “They have no ability to self-fund.”

The Blueprint for Maryland’s Future calls for a mixed delivery system for pre-K expansion, Weeldreyer said, which means private child care centers are expected to host half of the open slots.

“The goal is for 50% of all kids to be served for pre-K in private child care settings. So they're equally in it,” she said. “I think at this moment, [state leaders] might be thinking more about the implications for [school districts] and need to think more about the implications for child care.”

Weeldreyer said she wants to see a system that aligns the child care scholarships and pre-K costs — in terms of eligibility and operation.

“Pre-K eligibility is calculated using the federal poverty limit, and the child care scholarship eligibility is calculated using state median income,” Weeldreyer said. “So at this moment, you can't even line up the goalposts on the same field. They're playing two on two totally separate fields.”