'Milk Party' could make a difference

Florida's new "Milk Party" is crusading on behalf of a constituency with no self-declared political enemies: the children. But that doesn't mean the crusaders will have an easy time selling their agenda to lawmakers in Tallahassee who make multibillion-dollar choices between competing interests every year.

The leaders of the Children's Movement of Florida understand the difficulty they face in advocating programs -- some of which could be costly -- they believe will improve the lives of the state's children. David Lawrence Jr., the president and co-chairman of the Children's Movement, knows the group must build some political muscle before it can command attention in Tallahassee. Lawrence, a noted former journalist who served as publisher of The Miami Herald in the 1990s, hopes a statewide bus tour organized around rallies in 15 cities will galvanize public support for the movement's five-point program.

An enthusiastic crowd of several hundred people attended a Milk Party rally Monday evening at Mainland High in Daytona Beach. It's not clear whether the Milk Party crowds in Daytona Beach and other Florida cities will translate into political muscle in the Legislature, but the rallies are getting media attention even in the midst of the hot fall election season.

The attention is deserved: This is a serious group with a serious plan for pulling Florida up from the bottom or near the bottom in various national surveys of children's health and well-being. But how will the Milk Party overcome the inevitable resistance to "investments" in children that will require legislators to cut funding for some programs or raise taxes?

Lawrence and the other organizers are trying to avoid two potential minefields: partisanship and the tax issue. The movement is a "big tent" with room for Democrats, Republicans and Independents, Lawrence says. And he stresses that the leaders of group aren't advocating tax increases; their goal is to change state spending priorities.

He cites some good examples to make his point about priorities. The state spends about $2 billion on remedial education to help kids who fall behind in the classroom. Lawrence thinks it would make more sense to spend money on preschool programs -- the front end of education, so to speak -- than to pour dollars into remedial programs for older students who already are struggling and in danger of joining the ranks of school dropouts. He's right.

Lawrence notes that Florida officials won't hesitate to pursue money for a "bullet train" and other projects but show little sense of urgency about the state's low ranking on children's programs. We suspect that most Floridians, given a choice between the bullet train and spending more money on pre-kindergarten programs, would opt for the preschool spending.

But these are fairly easy choices. The debate over priorities gets stickier if the choice is between paying for promising preschool programs and funding essential public safety functions, including prisons. And legislators have reason to question the cost-effectiveness of some of the Milk Party proposals, especially the parent education initiatives.

The group's faith that access to "information" will improve parenting is justified in some instances, but too many children suffer from lack of parental attention, love and support. In those sad cases, providing information on good parenting practices won't help.

Still, the Milk Party organizers deserve credit for taking on children's issues and pushing to make them a higher priority in Tallahassee. Their efforts could make a real difference, especially if they force lawmakers to weigh spending on projects and programs that clearly are nonessential against initiatives that would give children a better start in life.

Read the full article here.