Cuts to Georgia’s lottery-funded pre-kindergarten program are fueling high teacher turnover and jeopardizing years of effort to better prepare youngsters for school, educators say.
Teachers this year left pre-k programs in droves, moving into elementary school openings to avoid a 10-percent, state-ordered pay cut that’s just kicked in.
In Fulton County, 57 of 77 pre-kindergarten teachers quit between the last school year and the current one. Some left the system for other careers, while 47 moved into teaching jobs in kindergarten through fifth grade, where salaries aren’t tied to the Georgia Lottery’s success.
“Prior to all the budget cuts, we retained about 70 to 75 percent of our teachers,” said Montreal Gore Bell, Fulton’s coordinator of early childhood and remedial programs. “Now, we’ve pretty much flip-flopped.”
In Decatur City Schools, six of nine pre-k teachers left. In Clayton, it was 31 out of 32 lead teachers.
“Georgia’s reputation as an early childhood leader is tarnished,” said Steve Barnett, director of the National Institute for Early Education Research, which produces an annual report rating the nation’s pre-k programs.
“If the best teachers leave, quality will suffer and the benefits will be eroded,” Barnett said. “Serving more children less effectively is no recipe for success.”
Louisa Melton, pre-k coordinator for the Griffin-Spalding County school system, said morale has “definitely hit bottom.
“We lost three excellent pre-k teachers to K-3 positions,” she said. “Most others requested transfers but were not given them.”
The pay cuts are part of Gov. Nathan Deal’s plan to reduce pre-k spending by $54 million this year, to $341.7 million, to help cope with flat-to-declining lottery funds. Deal took similar steps to ensure the long-term viability of the HOPE scholarship program, which, like free pre-k, has run off lottery revenue since inception.
For pre-k, that meant lopping a month off the school year, eliminating 190 private and 76 public pre-k classes statewide, and increasing class sizes to make room for an extra 2,000 4-year-olds, or a total of 86,000.
Those cuts were generally deemed a better alternative to Deal’s original proposal to take the program from full- to part-time.
For Sheltering Arms Early Education & Family Centers, the cuts mean $1.3 million fewer state dollars. The company, which offers 46 pre-k classes to 824 4-year-olds in metro Atlanta, was forced to close a center in Rockdale County that had served 90 children a day since 1975, said Paige McKay Kubik, vice president for development and communications.
Some school districts, including DeKalb, came up with local money to keep their pre-k programs at 10 months, and to preserve teacher salaries.
But Herb Garrett, executive director of the Georgia School Superintendents Association, said he doubts that can continue.
“In most of those cases, that was a one-year stop gap,” he said.
Garrett said there’s concern that, in the future, teachers will see pre-k as simply a stepping stone into K-12.
Bobby Cagle, commissioner of Bright from the Start, the agency that oversees the pre-k program, said the departures of so many pre-k teachers is a concern, but was not unexpected.
“This was a component of the conversations that we had during the [General Assembly] session,” Cagle said. “We felt as though when you cut people’s pay they are going to look for a better opportunity if they can, and who can blame them?”
Stephanie Mayfield, spokeswoman for Deal, said the cuts to pre-k were made "only out of necessity.
"Gov. Deal values the work of Georgia's pre-k teachers and believers that our early childhood educators are absolutely critical in making sure students get a firm foundation ...," Mayfield said. "Moving forward, increasing salaries of Georgia's pre-k teachers will be a top priority for the governor."
Georgia was considered a leader in early childhood education when it launched the nation’s first voluntary, free pre-kindergarten program for all 4-year-olds in 1995 and had an enrollment of 15,500. The program is now offered to at 1,055 private centers, 779 public schools, 13 colleges and 11 military installations.
Research shows that states see a $7 return for every $1 invested in early education because children who attend pre-k are better prepared for school. They are also more likely to avoid remedial education, graduate from high school, attend college and get higher-paying jobs.
Susan Andrews, superintendent of Muscogee County school system, said she believes most districts -- her’s included -- made the mistake of treating pre-k teachers the same as their K-12 teachers, allowing them to transfer in and out of pre-K as teachers do in other grades and “never thinking that the program would be cut in terms of days.”
“In hindsight, we should have treated that as an entirely separate program, because it is, with an entirely different funding source, guidelines, etcetera,” Andrews said. “We were so grateful to have pre-kindergarten and know that it has such a positive effect on school readiness that we embraced, and still embrace, it as a wonderful gift.”
Griffin’s Melton said in the early days of pre-k, her school system recruited for pre-k the strongest K-2 teachers. The result, she said, was a dramatic drop in the number of kindergarteners who were not promoted.
“While what we are able to offer is better than nothing, it is definitely not the quality that we have had for the past several years. This is so counterproductive to where we need to be going,” she said.
In Fulton, the 10-percent pay cut came on the heels of the school board’s decision last year to eliminate the local salary supplement for teachers, which saved the school system nearly $2 million but sent 77 of 79 teachers out the door. Salaries in that time were reduced from about $39,000 to about $30,000 for a new lead teacher with no prior experience.
“It raises quite a few concerns in that most of the teachers that we get are inexperienced, very young and are not as familiar with the 4-year-old child and the 4-year-old child’s behavior,” Bell said.
“But I’m not worried about the quality. I have confidence in our teachers, and we have very strong administrative support and support from the system.”
How $54 million is being cut from Georgia Pre-Kindergarten
-- Pre-k year cut from 10 months to 9 (160 days of instruction, 9 planning days)
-- Salaries for lead teachers reduced 10 percent
-- So-called T&E supplemental pay, awarded for certain degrees or experience levels, will be cut for current certified teachers. It has been capped for all returning teachers and will not be offered to new hires.
-- 306 pre-k classes closed
-- Class size boosted from 20 to 22 students, creating 2,000 new pre-k slots
-- Transition coaches who helped students prepare for kindergarten eliminated
Pre-K by the numbers
Total students: 82,687
Classes funded: 3,904
Sites funded: 1,858
Private: 1,055
Public: 779
Other Public: 24 (13 colleges, 11 military bases)
Student Information
American Indian or Alaskan Native – 249 (0.30%)
Asian – 2,496 (3.02%)
Black or African American – 32,140 (38.90%)
Hispanic/Latino – 12,419 (15.03%)
Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander – 281 (0.34%)
Two or More Races – 2,571 (3.11%)
White – 32,474 (39.30%)
Source: Bright from the Start: Georgia Department of Early Care and Learning
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