Preschool for Everyone

By Jodie Morse

Like many young parents, John and Janine Morreale were willing to stretch their finances to get their child, three-year-old Johnny, into preschool. Both worked full time--John in maintenance, Janine as a teacher--but their joint income was not enough to foot the $6,000 bill, equal to the yearly rent of their apartment. "We were living paycheck to paycheck, and we even had to start borrowing from my mother-in-law," recalls Janine. "It just didn't make any sense."

It makes a lot of sense now. In September, Johnny, now four, started pre-kindergarten at Brooklyn's P.S. 200, the local public elementary school--free. He is one of the first beneficiaries of a $62 million New York State program aimed at making preschool, like elementary and high school, part of every child's publicly funded education.

Parental demand for early learning has grown steadily in recent years--as has the cost. Well-off families can usually afford the pricey tuition of private preschool, and the poor are eligible for aid in the form of Head Start, the federally funded preschool program. But middle-class families like the Morreales have traditionally been left out.

That is starting to change. Today 39 states pay for at least one kind of pre-kindergarten program, says a September report by the Families and Work Institute. Though admission usually hinges on financial need, a few states are moving toward universal pre-K, so called because it provides a place for every child whose parents want one. Georgia has funded universal pre-K since 1995. And beginning this fall, New York is funding some 19,000 slots for pre-kindergartners, chosen mainly by lottery; it has pledged universal access by 2003.

Back in 1992, when Georgia Governor Zell Miller first floated the idea of publicly funding pre-K, his plan was roundly derided as state-sponsored baby sitting. Yet today Georgia's $217 million program serves 61,000 kids, and is so popular with parents that some camp out all night to be first to register. Miller now advocates mandatory enrollment. "If I had a choice of pre-K or 12th grade being mandatory," he says, "I'd take pre-K in a second."

Public preschool has been cropping up in stump speeches across the nation. Appearing at a 36-state powwow on pre-K in September, Education Secretary Richard Riley promised increased federal collaboration. Educators, who have long fretted over children showing up for kindergarten ill prepared, are coming around in support. Unlike some private nursery schools, where teachers may have only a high school diploma, most public pre-kindergarten teachers undergo the same rigorous certification as elementary school teachers. "Today we're asking kids to meet higher standards in K through 12," says American Federation of Teachers president Sandra Feldman. "But if we don't prepare them earlier, then they're not going to meet them."

Just what form this preparation should take is still being developed. "You have to let these kids be as creative and as free as they want," says New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman, whose state funds public pre-kindergarten in 136 districts. Standards vary from state to state. Georgia's pre-kindergarten curriculum includes language, literacy and math concepts. At Brooklyn's P.S. 200, a go-at-your- own-pace approach seems to apply. After a brief lesson, pint-size pupils roam among a playhouse, a game corner, an art center and a library. Says principal Neal Opromalla: "These children learn through play."

Play, according to some conservative critics, is precisely what four-year-olds ought to be doing--at home with Mom. "It's a transfer of funds away from the mother taking care of the child," says Patrick Fagan, FitzGerald fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation. "It's a double taxation on the mother at home. She takes care of her own kids and pays for others'."

Then there is the potential cost to the nation's overcrowded and underfunded school system. Georgia has thus far relied on funds generated by its state lottery and, like New York, partnered with private preschools to provide more teachers and classrooms. But in New York City, where there is a shortage of school buildings, some educators think pre-K is a luxury they can't afford. "The real question is, over time, whether we will be able to find enough space," says J.D. LaRock, a spokesman for New York City's board of education.

A final grade for public pre-K is yet to be determined. When the initial class of Georgia four-year-olds reached first grade, they logged higher test scores than kids who had not gone to pre-K. For the Morreales of Brooklyn the benefits have hit home. With the money they saved, they bought Johnny a computer.

--With reporting by Leslie Everton Brice and Greg Fulton/Atlanta

With reporting by Leslie Everton Brice and Greg Fulton/Atlanta