Editorial: Why does pre-kindergarten program have to be so hard?
The Naples Daily News
Floridians want children to start their educa tion as soon as possible. That is why they went to the polls in 2002 and passed a constitutional amendment to offer every 4-year-old the opportunity for a prekindergarten program at public expense.
The response has been improvised.
The elective voluntary prekindergarten (VPK) classes have not been the domain of public schools already in place, as some voters had ex pected. They have been largely run by the private sector, with churches and existing day-care cen ters taking up the slack. There have been some mergers with the federal Head Start program.
Quality has always been a concern. Within the past month the Florida Board of Education has repeated its policy stand for VPK to excel.
The VPK program is reaching only 70 percent of the eligible students — about 1,600 in Collier and 5,000 in Lee — and maybe that is serendipi tous, because the Florida Legislature has reduced rather than enlarged the per-student expendi tures. They started at $2,500 a year when the program was implemented in 2005-06 and now stand at less than $2,400.
It is a wonder that Florida voters still have any confidence at all in the constitutional amendment process, as issue after issue coming before voters turns out differently. Wasn’t the Florida Lottery supposed to remedy this kind of thing?
Thank goodness organizations such as the statewide Children’s Movement of Florida is keeping an eye on all this. They are lending a measure of accountability.
New Collier County Public Schools Superin tendent Kamela Patton is floating a trial balloon to get the school system more involved, perhaps with VPK programs at each elementary school.
We’ll see how this plays out. Problem is, we said that in 2002 and we’re still watching.
Public education is not the high priority we say it is as long as matters such as this, even after a referendum, have to grope for leadership.