Preschool Space Is at a Premium

New Sites Hard to Find in Area

Teacher Maria Chica looks in on Claudia Velasquez, 4, at one of 10 preschools operated by a nonprofit group in Alexandria and Arlington. The group has a waiting list of 150 children. (By Gerald Martineau -- The Washington Post)

Each winter, when the Valley Drive Preschool in Alexandria holds its annual enrollment open house, it draws the parents of far more toddlers than the school has room for. In recent years, the problem has gotten so bad -- with parents spending the night outside the school to try to snag a slot -- that Tara Casagrande, a parent there, decided to look into opening another preschool in the Del Ray area.

That was a year and a half ago. She still hasn't been able to do it.

"We came to a standstill," said Casagrande, who was joined in her quest by several other mothers. Commercial rentals cost too much to be carried by preschool tuition, Casagrande said, and space in churches, an old mainstay, was scarce. "We went to all the churches in the area, and no one has space."

The mothers hit on a problem plaguing preschool directors in many parts of the Washington area, particularly in built-up communities inside the Capital Beltway.

Preschool waiting lists have long been a fact of life for many parents, but recently, individuals looking to open schools, and long-established chains seeking to expand, say they are finding it increasingly difficult to locate space.

Local officials attribute the crunch to a soaring demand for preschool, fueled in part by immigrant parents who live inside the Beltway, tend to have larger families and have become more aware of the benefits of preschool. Studies have shown that children who attend preschool generally have higher success rates in elementary school and beyond.

Adding to the problem are ever stricter accreditation standards that require more space for preschools. Plus, traditional sites such as churches are often saturated. But the main obstacle has been the steep rise in real estate prices.

"It's very expensive to run a preschool, and there's very little return," said Mimi Carter, who has run early-education programs in the District and is the author of "The Insider's Guide to Quality Childcare in D.C." "You can barely make enough money to pay the teachers."

Although birthrates are rising across the area, the problem is particularly acute close to the District. For example, from 1995 to 2002 (when some of today's 3- and 4-year-olds were born), Alexandria's birthrate shot up 53 percent and Prince William County's, 43 percent. But in the same period, the number of preschools rose 45 percent in Prince William and 24 percent in Alexandria.

Montgomery County is another area with high rents and high density. Pilar Torres, executive director of Centro Familia, a nonprofit early-childhood education organization in Silver Spring, spent six months scouring the county for a place to open a preschool for low-income immigrant families. She said the families she works with have high birthrates and are increasingly aware that preschool is an investment in their children's future.

"But when the family gets that awareness, they turn around and there's no center," she said.

Mark Rosenberg, president of Bethesda-based the Kid's Place Inc., said he started his company in Montgomery 20 years ago but now operates in Prince George's County, where he has four child-care centers, because rents are 50 percent less. "I would love to do another in Montgomery County; we just can't make it work for us," he said.