One of the few constants in the author's life since beginning work at a Montessori school, in 1968, is that people are still asking why more children, especially children from low-income families, do not have access to high-quality Montessori programs. The problem of creating free or low-cost opportunities has been a struggle since the first Montessori school opened, in 1907. Of course, many independent Montessori schools offer scholarships. And free Montessori exists, in the form of public school programs, dating back to Sands Montessori School, which opened in the Cincinnati public schools in 1967. However, starting a public Montessori school requires a large initial investment for teacher education, materials, furniture, and so on. Most public schools look to outside funding to cover these costs. For a time, a consistent funding method for implementing new public Montessori schools was federal grants for magnet schools, a way to desegregate schools without mandatory busing. However, this funding source dried up almost completely more than a decade ago. Since then, as more and more states allow charter schools, Montessori has become a popular choice. The author's goal in this article is to write plainly about some of the difficulties he has observed in public Montessori programs over the years. Some are the same difficulties found in independent Montessori programs, while others seem to be unique to public schools, or at least pose a greater problem for those schools.