Pre-K: How
How do I start universal access to pre-k in my town?
By now you are confident that preschool is important, it is possible to pay for publicly funded preschool without adding to the homestead tax rate, and there are a number of key players who can help make preschool happen. What are the next steps?
You can start by talking with key stake holders in your town: the Superintendent of Schools, your local school board, childcare providers, other parents, and other professionals and volunteers involved in the lives of young children.
The Vermont Community Preschool Collaborative is here to help you. Contact Mark Sustic or Sherry Carlson at the Vermont Community Preschool Collaborative (www.permanentfund.org/vcpc) to discuss your ideas and interests. Mark or Sherry can help you orient an approach to organizing your community to put together a plan for publicly funded preschool.
How do I talk with our superintendent?
The Superintendent serves as the chief administrative officer and educational leader of your local school system. It is likely that the superintendent understands the strong educational benefits of attending preschool. Support from the public (people like you!) is important for the superintendent to promote a plan for access to publicly funded preschool. Contact the superintendent to schedule an appointment to talk about preschool. If you don’t already know the superintendent, talk to somebody who does so you know a little about the personality of the person you will be talking to. If you have one or two like minded friends or associates who are interested in preschool and willing to join you at the meeting, bring them along. Be sure to let the Superintendent know who will be attending the meeting.
Why should Superintendents support Preschool?
Superintendents have two principle interests: success for all students and efficiency in delivering educational services. The Superintendent knows that children who enter Kindergarten ready to learn are more likely to succeed and require less in the way of sometimes costly special services.
You can present information from the Vermont Kindergarten School Readiness Survey for your school district (http://humanservices.vermont.gov/publications/school-readiness-report) and discuss how preschool can improve your school readiness scores.
Research from the National Institute for Early Education Research clearly documents the benefits of attending high quality preschool, including reductions in special education costs down the road. Publicly supported preschool can be delivered very efficiently and have little or no impact on residential tax rates. Current demographic trends show many school enrollments declining, and Pre-K enrollment can provide increased school stability.
What might Superintendents be concerned about?
Remember that school systems often serve 13 additional school grades, each with its own needs and challenges. Pre-K must balance with overall school improvement strategies implemented at the other grade levels. Also, assuming you want at least part of your preschool to be provided at childcare centers or home based childcare, the Superintendent has to be comfortable with the notion of public private partnerships for delivering educational services and the potential for supporting private preschool providers with public resources. If the community does not have qualified childcare providers within the school district’s borders, the district does have the option of contracting with out of town childcare providers where resident children already attend childcare. Remember that most school districts in Vermont already contract with non-public school educational and other service providers (e.g. tuition to other high schools when a community doesn’t have its own high school, contracts for specialized special education services). This is not an unusual arrangement in principle. It makes sense to take advantage of the early care and education expertise already in place in the community.
How do I talk with our school board?
The School Board is the elected policy and budget setting governance body for your school district. The Superintendent needs the support of the school board in order to move forward on implementing a Pre-K program. Phone or meet with individual school board members to discuss the benefits of publicly funded Pre-K. Ask the school board chair if you can get on the school board meeting agenda to discuss Pre-K, or better yet, ask the Superintendent if the two of you can get on the agenda to discuss Pre-K. Remember that Vermont’s public meeting law forbids two or more school board members from getting together to discuss school business outside of a public meeting, so you can only have private conversations with individual school board members.
Why should School Board Members support Preschool?
School Success: School board members likely have the same interest in children’s success in school that the Superintendent has. Remind the school board that quality Pre-K is a proven strategy for school improvement.
Costs and Taxes: Publicly supported preschool is cost neutral once the school district has gotten past the two year ADM funding hurdle.
Reduced Special Ed Costs: High quality preschool has been proven in study after study to reduce the need for special education services. Once again, see the summary of the research at www.publicpolicyforum.org/matrix.htm.
Strengthening Childcare in the Community: By partnering with childcare providers in the community, the school board invests funding and opportunities for professional development with childcare providers and supports local small businesses. High quality childcare is essential for a child’s development, for parents ability to work and earn an income, and for employers ability to attract and retain high quality employees. Yet despite the importance of childcare, childcare providers are currently among the least well compensated in the overall workforce.
What might School Board members be concerned about?
Cost: School board members might intuitively think that because adding publicly funded preschool will increase overall school spending, then tax rates will go up. However, because of the way Average Daily Membership and Vermont’s property tax laws work, adding preschool is cost neutral once the school has overcome the two year ADM hurdle, and adding preschool can actually cause taxes to go down. Remind school board members that your property taxes (and their property taxes) are currently paying for preschool in other communities, but not in yours.
Importance of Preschool: Not everyone in the community understands the value of an early education, and many people think young children should be educated at home. Remember, two thirds of Vermont preschool aged children aren’t at home during the day. They attend childcare. Shouldn’t the quality of early education at the childcare be as high as what they might have gotten at home?
Preschoolers Length of Day in School: Many people might be concerned that "A 3 year old should not be in school all day." The preschool programs we are talking about last no more than ten hours a week, or two to three hours per day. The curriculum is play- based. Children learn by drawing, singing, listening to stories, interacting with each other and otherwise doing fun and developmentally appropriate activities.
How do I talk with my childcare provider?
Childcare Providers are your partners in delivering high quality publicly funded preschool that is accessible to the majority of Vermont children whose parents have to work during the day. The childcare setting is the safe, nurturing and convenient option for providing high quality Pre-K. Talk with childcare providers in your community about how they can benefit by partnering with the school district to offer Pre-K.
Why should Childcare Providers support Preschool?
Publicly funded preschool provides a sustainable funding source from the school district to improve the quality of childcare. Childcare providers will be able to offer higher salaries and professional development opportunities for early educators. Part-time preschool can be maintained within the context of a full day childcare setting. Childcare providers can also develop other partnerships with the school district, including after school programs and co-training.
What might Home Based and Center Based Childcare Providers be concerned about?
Childcare providers need to think about what niche they want to be in. Do they want to be involved in Pre-K and the accompanying high quality standards? The school district will require accountability from the childcare providers for financial reporting and sustaining high quality. Childcare providers will have to decide if they want to meet the quality standards on their own, or have someone, such as a preschool teacher directly affiliated with the school district, come to their childcare site and provide preschool for them.
How is universal pre-k funded?
Vermont’s Act 62 allows each school district to count 3 and 4 year olds on the school census for up to 10 hours of preschool services per enrolled child and factor the count into the public education funding formula. There is a cap on the total number of preschool aged children counted equal to half of the school district’s 3 and 4 year olds. General enrollment preschool is paid for as part of the state wide property tax system. However, there is a catch. Local tax rates are based on the total cost of the school budget this year divided by the number of students enrolled for the previous two years. The enrollment number is known as Average Daily Membership, or ADM. In terms of tax rates, there is an incentive to have a high number of students counted (ADM) and a low overall budget.
If your community has an existing preschool program, you’re all set–your tax rates don’t go up or down based on preschool. If you want to start a new preschool program, you have to add to your costs this year, but your preschool enrollment for the previous two years is zero. In other words, you are adding to your total budget costs this year and you are not yet adding to your total enrollment. We call this the two year ADM funding hurdle. After two years, your enrollment will go up by the number of preschool students enrolled. Assuming the total budget remains the same, taxes come back down.
In reality, it gets more complex than this. Students in each grade group are counted at different full time equivalent rates based on the costs of providing services. Preschool students are counted at 0.46 of a full time equivalent because they attend school only 10 hours a week. There are also other nuances and variables that go into setting a local tax rate. The important principle to remember is this: If you do not currently have access to publicly supported preschool in your community, your statewide property taxes are already paying for children in other communities to have access to preschool. If you want to start access to preschool in your community, there is a temporary two year lag in funding that could raise homestead property tax rates. Once you have cleared that two year ADM funding hurdle, preschool will not have an additional affect on your homestead property tax rate.
For mor detail on Act 62 and ADM funding, see the Vermont Department of Education’s Guide for Implementing PreKindergarten Education under Act 62: http://education.vermont.gov/new/html/pgm_earlyed/prekindergarten.html
VCPC can provide funding so tax rates do not go up in the first two years of implementing your publicly supported preschool. Before we can do that, we need you to work with your school district and community to encourage and create access to preschool.
