Pre-kindergarten by the numbers
314 million – approximate number of dollars in lottery revenue allocated for Georgia pre-k this year
84,000 – approximate number of children in Georgia's program
7,000 – children on Georgia pre-k waiting list
58 – percentage of eligible Georgia children who are in pre-k
41 – states operating pre-k programs
22 – Typical Georgia pre-k class size
Georgia’s early education program, once held up as one of the nation’s most advanced, has been scaled back amid years of budget cuts, with thousands of children on a waiting list to attend pre-kindergarten classes.
The issue has emerged as one of the key education topics in Georgia’s heated governor’s race. Democratic candidate Jason Carter criticizes the nearly $55 million in cuts made to pre-k during Republican Gov. Nathan Deal’s tenure. Deal defends his record and says the cuts made during the recession were needed to save the program from bankruptcy. He points out some of the cuts have been restored, including the return to a 180-day school year.
Carter is interested in using state lottery reserves to beef up pre-k funding and is open to using tax revenues to support the program, which is currently funded with lottery revenue.
Deal campaign leaders expect the governor to share more details by next month about his plans for reviving the popular program.
Pre-k class sizes remain higher than they were before the scaleback. The number of classrooms also has not returned to pre-recession numbers, with 7,000 children currently on a waiting list to attend, according to state officials.
“We have never restored the quality of our pre-k, prior to big cuts in 2011,” said Pat Willis, executive director for the advocacy group Voices for Georgia’s Children. “We still have 22 kids in a class (prior to cuts, it was 20). Under the old budget, we provided some money for transportation and … money for family resource coordinators – people that pre-k centers can hire to help with outreach to parents.”
The attention to pre-k comes as a growing number of Americans are calling for increased federal funding to support preschool programs. A Gallup poll released last week reported seven in 10 Americans say they favor using federal money to make sure high-quality preschool education programs are available for every child.
Politicians are taking note, with 41 states now operating pre-k programs – the biggest number yet, according to the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University. President Obama has also pushed for universal access to preschool education for 4-year-olds.
Carolina Villaseca Witt, whose son attended a Georgia-funded pre-k in Cobb County last year, said the experience was crucial for his success in kindergarten this school year.
“If you want to raise the standard of education in Georgia in general, that (providing pre-k) is key,” Witt said. “You have to help kids get ready for school.”
“Kindergarten has changed tremendously. When we went, we were not expected to know our alphabet … to count to 100 … to know colors or letters. They still cover it, but at a much accelerated pace because now in kindergarten it’s kind of expected you will come knowing these things. You’re getting ready to read, write and to do more complex work and a lot more of it.”
Georgia's pre-k program was the nation's first state-funded universal preschool program for 4-year-olds, begun in 1995. But its historically strong pre-k leadership faltered during the recession, with the state's ranking slipping in both access and funding, according to the Rutgers institute. Steve Barnett, director of the Rutgers institute, said other states have passed Georgia in pre-k funding, enrollment and standards.
“In a knowledge economy, there’s just so much more focus on getting a good education in order to get a good job,” Barnett said. “Neuroscience has made it clear how important development is in those first five years. Social science and psychology are showing how important it is for children to get off on the right track, how much easier it is to succeed if you don’t fall behind or get in trouble in the first place rather than trying to fix a problem later.”
Georgia ranks 8th for 4-year-old enrollment, reaching 58 percent of eligible students – nearly 84,000 children; and 28th nationally for spending per child at the pre-k level.
For the current school year, nearly $314 million in lottery funds have been allocated to pre-k in Georgia. Some $55 million was cut from pre-k during the recession, with program funding dropping from $355 million in 2011 to $300 million in 2012. In 2013, it dropped to nearly $298 million.
“His (Deal) cuts set it back years,” Carter said in a recent interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “The cuts were a disaster and they were too deep. Much deeper than they needed to be.”
Carter has sought to make boosting overall education funding the cornerstone of his campaign, and vows to do so by targeting tax cheats and slashing wasteful spending. Deal offers more modest education proposals, and argues Carter’s plan would inevitably lead to a tax hike.
In addition to the possibility of using lottery reserves to restore funding, Carter is also open to raising pre-k teacher pay – which is on average less than kindergarten teachers make in Georgia.
Lottery revenue dedicated to education has grown since it plunged 4 percent, or $39 million, in 2011. It was up 7 percent in 2012 and 3 percent in 2013, according to the Georgia Lottery Corp. And the reserve fund had $734 million as of June 30, 2013, records show.
“We’re adding massive amounts over and above the required reserve into this reserve account instead of putting those dollars to work in the lottery–funded programs,” Carter said.
Faced with declining lottery revenues amid the recession, Deal cut the pre-k program back by 20 school days, to 160 a year, though that’ s since been fully restored to 180 days.
Lowering “the class size continues to be a top focus,” according to an e-mailed statement from Jennifer Talaber, a spokeswoman for Deal’s re-election campaign. She wrote, “He (Deal) worked with the General Assembly to pass bipartisan reforms that preserved the HOPE Grant and Scholarship programs and Georgia pre-k for the next generation. The cuts that had to be made at that time in order to prevent bankruptcy were difficult ones.”
Susan Adams, assistant commissioner for Georgia’s pre-k and instructional support at the Department of Early Care and Learning, said one of the agency’s priorities is to get classroom size down to 20 again.
“As we looked at the priorities of restoring the cuts, we first wanted to do the increased school calendar, because that directly touches kids. We know days kids are in the program certainly connect to outcomes.”
Barnett said he’s seen “a lack of willingness to make sufficient funding available to make it (Georgia pre-k) a truly universal program.”
“Georgia’s been moving back to where it was before the recession. And I think the big question is whether Georgia is going to step up and really make the program universal.”
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