|
by Linda Jacobson, September 4, 2002, Education Week -
American Education's Newspaper of Record
A recently approved plan to spend $100 million over the next five years to
make preschool more widely available to youngsters in Los Angeles County
is being touted as a national model.
And experts say similar early-childhood initiatives and proposals in other
metropolitan areas may be a signal that support is growing for publicly
financed preschool programs.
The nine-member Los Angeles Proposition 10 Commission, the body that
decides how to spend state tobacco-tax revenues collected in the county,
voted unanimously last month to approve the allocation. The commission has
now entered a six- to 12-month planning period to work out the details.
"This is exactly what Prop 10 was designed to do," the actor and filmmaker
Rob Reiner, who led the campaign to win state voters' approval of the
tobacco-tax measure in 1998, told the commissioners. "This is a historic
day for the children, not only of L.A. County, but of the country. This is
going to be the model."
Instead of building a new program from scratch, the initial plan is to use
the money to help existing preschool services—such as Head Start and
California's state preschool program—enroll more poor children who are
eligible, but are not currently being served. The money will also be used
to expand services provided by nonprofit agencies and to secure full-day
preschool services for families that need them.
Beyond Los Angeles
Although the plan will first target children who are eligible for
subsidized services, the commission's intent is to work toward offering
early care and education services to all children in Los Angeles County,
from birth to age 5. The county has 81 different school districts, and
local officials estimate there are about 100,000 3 and 4-year-olds in the
county who are not receiving preschool services.
"There seems to be a trend of cities taking this into their own hands,"
said Anne Mitchell, an early- education consultant and expert on the
growth of prekindergarten programs nationwide. She is the founder of Early
Childhood Policy Research, a Climax, N.Y.-based consulting group.
While Los Angeles County is unusual in that its preschool initiative will
eventually focus on all children under 5, it's not the only major area
that is working to make preschool available to more children.
Residents in Florida's Miami-Dade County, for example, will vote next week
on whether to approve a new property tax that would be used to finance
programs for children. The tax, if approved, would bring in roughly $60
million a year, and half of that would be used for child-development and
school- readiness programs for children from birth to age 5.
In Houston, the Greater Houston Collaborative for Children, a project
involving business leaders, government representatives, and service
providers, is working with the Center for Houston's Future—a group led by
business leaders—to design a plan for expanding preschool programs for all
children throughout the Houston region. The initiative has been under way
for about six months.
While no specific source of funding has been identified, organizers of the
Houston project say they first want to help existing preschool providers
pull together money they might not know is available.
"We're looking at how we can maximize current resources," said Todd C.
Litton, who is heading the early-childhood effort.
Special committees, he added, are also working to determine how many
preschool-age children in the Houston area need services, reviewing child-
development research, and discussing ways to involve child-care providers,
Head Start centers, and local school districts.
Reiner's Lobbying Pays Off
The vote by Los Angeles County's Proposition 10 panel came just two
months after Mr. Reiner urged the members to take such a bold step. ("L.A.
Panel Set to Vote on Preschool-for-All Plan," July 10, 2002.) And it came
just one month after the commission voted to spend another $100 million
over five years to provide health insurance coverage to young children in
the county living in families that earn up to three times the federal
poverty rate.
The commissioners' buy-in to the preschool plan, however, did not come
without last- minute lobbying by Mr. Reiner, who serves as the chairman of
First 5 California, the new name for the statewide Children and Families
Commission.
Some members of the Los Angeles County panel were not sold on the plan
until the proposal also gave attention to the needs of infants and
toddlers. When the panel first openly discussed the topic of "universal"
preschool in June, some members were worried that younger children were
being ignored.
As a result, the plan that was approved by the Proposition 10 commission
states that one of the objectives of the county's initiative is "to
improve the quality of preschool and early-childhood-development programs
and early learning experiences for children birth to 5 starting with 3- to
5-year- olds."
The plan has support from many representatives of the county's child- care
community.
"Rob did his homework to involve the different preschool and child-care
constituencies," said Bruce Fuller, an education professor at the
University of California, Berkeley. "He showed a lot of skill and a lot of
patience."
Lingering Concerns
But some family child-care and faith- based providers say they are not
yet convinced that the new initiative—and efforts to improve wages—will
include them.
"We want inclusion. We want a broad base and the funding to support it,"
Joanne Shalhoub-Mejia, the president of the county's Hispanic Providers
Association, said in a press release.
Leaders of the 737,000-student Los Angeles Unified School District, who
won't be in charge of the new preschool classes but have said they will
work in partnership with the commission, have also expressed strong
support.
In fact, the district's school board has set aside $80 million
specifically for early-childhood-education facilities in the $3.35 billion
school bond that is on the Nov. 5 ballot.
"Our goal in Los Angeles is to close the achievement gap," Caprice Young,
the president of the city's school board told the Proposition 10
commissioners. "We have to make sure there isn't an educational gap at the
beginning."
The Long-Term Goal
As Los Angeles County moves forward with its initiative, experts on
early-childhood policy say it will be important to build something that
will be sustained in the future, regardless of what happens to the 50-cent
per pack cigarette tax, which generates about $650 million statewide each
year.
"I hope this doesn't dissipate into spreading some money around and not
inventing a system," said Karen Hill-Scott, a member of the statewide
commission.
Mr. Fuller added that the Los Angeles Proposition 10 commissioners also
need to think about ways to attract Latino and Asian-American families
into the programs.
"I have this nagging worry that we'll build more centers and the parents
won't come," he said.
Mr. Fuller also pointed out that the early-childhood workforce, which is
primarily made up of white and African-American women, needs to be
transformed to reflect the diversity of the community.
|
