Cambridge Preschool Program Lottery: How to rank your choices [Table Included]

The Cambridge Preschool Program (CPP) provides free preschool to all 4-year-olds (and some 3-year-olds) living in Cambridge.

But the options can be confusing — luckily, we've written this guide (and updated it already quite a few times as new questions and information come in). So please email us with thoughts and questions!

Main takeaway — If your child will need aftercare, choose either a DHSP preschool program or a private provider (don't choose CPS). While some CPS placements do have afterschool partnerships with private providers (more below), CPS placements don't usually allow for aftercare. 

The biggest reason to choose a CPS placement is that you want your child to have a better chance of starting Kindergarten at a sought-after CPS school, such as Tobin Montessori, Amigos Spanish immersion, or the MLK Mandarin immersion program. 

Application details:
CPP lottery applications are open from Wednesday, October 1 to Friday, November 14, 2025. You'll learn what you got in January 2026.

Your child is eligible if you live in Cambridge and they will be 3 or 4 years old by August 31, 2026.

🫤​ Still waiting for last CPP lottery's data. 
We will update this post when the data is released. The City has promised to do so! But we still don't have it. (This was one of the questions we got most frequently from parents applying to preschools at a recent schools fair.)

For now, this is the only data available. The most recent Kindergarten lottery data I could find is for January 2023. (The City stopped sharing the lottery data when CPP began, saying the old data wouldn't be helpful under the new system. But we believe it actually would be useful. We will update once they share this data.)

Questions & thoughts:

• If you have questions, contact CPP staff at [email protected] or 617.349.1798
• You can also ask us (or add to/correct this blog post) – Eugenia is at [email protected] (she is running for School Committee); Jill is [email protected] (she went through CPP last school year).

We'll follow up this "how-to" post with one on "policy problems/improvements." Please write into us with any policy thoughts or concerns. 

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