Fighting to open preschool doors

Even in tough economic times, Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine remains committed to his signature initiative – opening the preschool doors to more poor children.

We applaud his tenacity. All children deserve a good educational start.

Now, it’s up to Senate and House budget conferees to preserve the funding to expand this vital program, called the Virginia Preschool Initiative. As proposed, the House and Senate budgets both provide funds to create more public preschool classrooms across the state, but they differ in the details.

The House and Senate were debating their versions of the budget Thursday. Once each chamber approves a spending plan, those plans will move on to a conference committee that will work out the differences.

Speaking to this newspaper’s editorial board Thursday, Kaine addressed his preschool initiative, which he has scaled back in response to the sharp economic downturn in the state and the nation. When he was elected, Kaine had hoped to offer universal preschool to all Virginia 4-year-olds, regardless of income. He is now touting a much less ambitious, but equally important, program targeted at lower-income youngsters who most urgently need the help.

"When revenues slowed, I reduced my own programs, too," Kaine said. "I reduced it to $46 million ... about a 20 percent reduction."

Kaine scrapped the universal preschool proposal fairly early in the process after encountering fiscal and philosophical road blocks. But he had hoped to expand the Virginia Preschool Initiative – a program that serves needy children who aren’t served by the federal Head Start program – by $58 million. That would have created 500 new preschool classrooms across the state.

The governor’s scaled-back $46 million expansion proposal would create 400 new classrooms serving about 6,000 more 4-year-olds. The proposed Senate budget provides $44 million in extra preschool funding. The House budget has a $25 million increase.

Kaine believes the end result of the budget negotiation process should be somewhere between his retooled proposal and the House proposal. But it isn’t just dollar amounts that have the governor concerned. The House proposal requires local school districts to put up $4 in local funds for every state dollar. This local match is out of reach for districts in economically distressed areas, like Southwest and Southside Virginia. Kaine supports a dollar-for-dollar match.

The governor also has concerns about the House proposal to limit preschool funds to those students who qualify for free lunches. He wants those who receive reduced-price lunches – who are still lower-income by almost any definition – to qualify.

These are sensible concerns and we urge our delegates and senators to make these changes. Both will benefit school districts in this region that have fewer financial resources than those in metropolitan parts of the state.

A quality preschool experience prepares children for today’s more rigorous kindergarten settings. Middle- and upper-income families can afford to provide this early learning for their children if they desire to do so. Without public preschool programs, lower-income children often arrive at kindergarten with little or no preparation.

Once these children fall behind, it’s hard for them to catch up with their peers. Better to spend our money on preschool than on remedial reading and other programs in elementary school.

Studies show that quality preschool makes a difference for low-income students. A modest expansion of Virginia’s preschool program makes sense, even in a time of belt-tightening.