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Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Pre-K: Something’s Gotta Give
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It didn’t take a fortune teller to predict that parents in Cobb County would be scrambling to find schools for their 4-year-olds after the county school system decided to pull out of the state’s free Pre-K program earlier this year.
Now, hundreds of anxious parents have put their children on waiting lists, hoping against hope that they’ll get into one of the remaining programs.
The problem: Last school year, the school system was able to serve more than 500 children through Pre-K. But, so far, private providers have replaced only 300 of those spots.
Georgia’s free, Lottery-funded pre-kindergarten program is open to any 4-year-old, so long as parents can find their children a seat in one of the classes — and there’s the rub, as Shakespeare would say. Finding openings is a problem throughout metro Atlanta, not just in Cobb, where the situation has obviously been exacerbated.
What I found interesting about Diane Stepp’s story today was that the majority of Cobb’s free pre-kindergarten classes had been concentrated in areas where the numbers of poor, immigrant children are the highest. So the kids that need free options the most are being hit hardest by the system’s pullout.
Years ago, when Pre-K first started, it was actually geared toward low-income or “at-risk” families. But the income cap was lifted soon after and now even the wealthiest families can participate.
Still, only about half (52 percent) of all eligible families use the state program. Certainly, some in the other half are paying to send their little ones to tuition-based programs and others have decided that 4 is simply too young to begin school.
But I’m starting to wonder: Are families not using Pre-K simply because they can’t find an open class?
