Milton Standard Journal: Seeking funding for early childhood education
June 8, 2018 by Kevin Mertz
Rep. Lynda Schlegel-Culver (R-108) believes the 2018-2019 state budget will include increased funding for Pre-K Counts programs. She doubts it will be to the tune of the $40 million being asked for by a nonprofit organization which held a roundtable discussion Thursday afternoon at the Milton YMCA.
The discussion was spearheaded by Mission: Readiness, described as a being comprised of retired admirals and generals “strengthening national security by ensuring kids stay in school, stay fit and stay out of trouble.”
Steve Doster, Pennsylvania state director for Mission: Readiness, and Retired U.S. Navy Admiral Thomas J. Wilson III were two of the speakers at the event. They released a report which calls for “$40 million in new state funding to serve an additional 4,400 at-risk children with high quality school day, school year Pre-K programs,” such as Head Start and Pennsylvania Pre-K Counts.
Following the roundtable, Schlegel-Culver said Pre-K Counts programming will likely receive an increase in 2018-2019, but she doubted it would be $40 million.
“It’s rare that everybody gets what they’re asking,” she said. “When the governor does a budget proposal, it’s just a proposal.”
Any increase would be drawn from the state’s General Fund, Schlegel-Culver said.
Last year, she said Pre-K Counts programming received $172 million in state funding, while Head Start programs received $54 million.
Schlegel-Culver said she expects a budget agreement to be reached by the June 30 deadline.
During the roundtable, Schlegel-Culver said Pre-K Counts funding has increased by $88.6 million since she took office in 2010. Head Start funding has increased by 44 percent.
She told the group that she will always speak to the importance of funding early childhood education.
“When we talk to House members who don’t have children, the conversation is a little tougher,” Schlegel-Culver said.
She likened funding early childhood programs to building a house. Every home must be built on a solid foundation.
Those lobbying for the increase to Pre-K funding provided a variety of statistics in an effort to back up their positions on the importance of funding such programs.
Wilson quoted a Department of Defense study which found 71 percent of individuals age 17 to 24 are ineligible for military service.
According to Wilson, that is due to the individuals either failing to graduate from high school, failing to pass military entrance exams, or being in poor health or physical conditioning.
“The talents the military is looking for in young men and women is the exact talents they’re looking for in business,” Wilson said. “It translates to everything we know and see in our own communities.”
He indicated it’s important to start providing quality education to children at an early age in order to reverse those statistics.
Wilson said 106,000 eligible children in Pennsylvania lack access to quality early childhood programming.
“The ultimate goal of all of this is preparing all of our children to be citizen ready for their lives,” Wilson said.
Expanding on the 106,000 figure presented by Wilson, Joanne Troutman, president and CEO of the Greater Susquehanna Valley United Way, recited numbers exemplifying how many local children are in need of access to quality early childhood programming.
In Northumberland County, she said 2,040 children under 5 are eligible for such programs. However, only 255 are enrolled.
In Snyder County, there are 660 eligible children, of which 91 are enrolled. In Union County, 590 children are eligible and 57 are enrolled.
To be eligible, families must have an income up to 200 percent of the federal poverty guidelines.
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Daily Item: Valley Leaders Encourage Investing in Early Education
June 8, 2018 by Justin Strawser
State Rep. Lynda Schlegel Culver said Thursday she expects an increase in the state budget for Pre-K Counts and Head Start programs that will allow children access to high-quality early care and education, and develop them for the future.
Culver and other Valley officials discussed a report touting the military’s early childhood education programs.
“It’s not who we are — to say we’re going to raise children who are going to be behind the curve from the get-go,” said retired U.S. Rear Navy Admiral Tom Wilson. “That’s not who we are as a country.”
The military and community leaders urged state legislators such as Culver, R-108, to continue scaling up Pennsylvania’s investments in these early childhood programs. They called for a $40 million increase to state pre-K programs and a combined $27 million increase for quality and access improvements to the state child care system as part of the 2018-18 state budget currently under negotiation in Harrisburg.
“It’s an investment in our future,” Culver said. “I always say, these (children) are the people who will be taking care of us, these are the people that will be running this country and making decisions. If they are not equipped to do that, think of the kind of world we’ll be living in. I don’t want to work until I’m 95 years old. I want to be able to pass the torch on to well equipped, well-rounded group of people who can make decisions.”
Since 2010, Pre-K funding has increased by $88.6 million. Currently, the previous year’s budget has $172 million for Pre-K Counts and $54 million for Head Start. Culver said she expects those numbers again to rise, but not as much as the group is calling for on Thursday.
The roundtable discussion was organized by Mission: Readiness that, with U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Tom Wilson, released a new report showing how high-quality early care and education programs support working families and help address the problems that disqualify the vast majority of young Americans from military service. Other participants, such as Art Thomas, President of Meck-Tech Inc., in Selinsgrove, said unpreparedness of youth extends to the private sector as well with 52 percent of employees reporting trouble hiring people with adequate skills, training and education.
The Mission: Readiness report entitled “The Military Gets It: So Why Not PA?” highlights research showing that high-quality pre-k and child care programs can support children’s success and readiness in three categories: education, obesity and behavior. It also touted the military’s early care and education system as a transformative model for the state and nation.
Currently, about 106,000 eligible 3 and 4-year-olds (61 percent) statewide lack access to publicly funded, high-quality pre-K because of insufficient funding, said Joanne Troutman, president and CEO of the Greater Susquehanna Valley United Way. Locally, those numbers are as follows: Northumberland County, 1,326 eligible children (78 percent), Snyder County, 442 (72 percent), Union County, 398 (71 percent).
The ultimate goal — whether for the military or the local community — is preparing all children to be “citizen ready,” Wilson said.
Read the full article here.
Public News Service: Poll Shows Overwhelming Support for Increased State Pre-k Funding
June 8, 2018 by Andrea Sears
As the legislature returns to hammer out a state budget, a new poll shows a sizable majority of voters are willing to pay more taxes to support publicly funded pre-K programs.
The statewide poll, commissioned by the Pre-K for PA campaign, found that three out of four voters in the Keystone State support increased state funding to expand access to high-quality pre-kindergarten. And Brock McCleary, president of Harper Polling, says when it comes to recognizing the necessity of skills and behaviors learned in pre-k, voters are almost unanimous.
“This is a rare case where you have a strong consensus that early childhood education really is critical to the kind of student you become and ultimately the kind of healthy and productive life we want all of our Pennsylvanians to strive for,” says McCleary.
Almost two-thirds of those polled say they would pay an extra $50 a year in taxes to fund high-quality pre-k.
McCleary notes that the results were fairly consistent in every part of the state, in every age group, and across party lines.
“Fifty-seven percent of Republicans favor increasing pre-k spending. Folks who are 65-years of age and older support an increase in funding for pre-k,” says McCleary.
Right now, more that 106,000 eligible Pennsylvania children do not have access to publicly funded pre-k.
McCleary says the poll results show that Pennsylvania voters recognize that ages of three to five are a time of incredible development for children.
“The capacity for learning and knowledge is extreme and it can be difficult for parents to fill that need and so pre-k is doing a good job of helping to provide that,” says McCleary.
The current proposal for the new state budget includes an additional $40 million for pre-k, enough to expand access to more than 4,400 new students.
Read the article here.
Philly.com: Pa. voters willing to pay more taxes for more pre-K, poll finds
June 7, 2018 by Thomas Fitzgerald
It’s safe to say that pollsters don’t often find a super-majority of voters willing to pay more in taxes.
Yet in a new poll to be released Thursday, 64 percent of Pennsylvania likely voters said they would support a tax increase to expand publicly funded preschool education, responding to a hypothetical hike of .01 percentage points in the personal income tax, which would cost an average taxpayer about $50.
The poll was paid for by the Pre-K for PA campaign, a coalition of state nonprofits advocating for early childhood education, and it was conducted by Harper Polling, a Republican firm based in Harrisburg.
“There is a strong consensus among Pennsylvania voters who think that early childhood education is important,” said Brock McCreary, president of Harper Polling.
Ninety-four percent of respondents said pre-K helped people live a healthy and productive life. By 75 percent to 18 percent, voters said they supported increased public funding for preschool for children aged 3 and 4. Every demographic group tested backed more spending, though Republicans (57 percent) and conservatives (61 percent) were slightly less supportive.
Read the full article
here.
Morning Call: Pennsylvania’s Taxing Politics of Early Childhood Education
June 7, 2018 by Steve Esack
Pennsylvania’s budget season is in full swing as the fiscal year winds down and the next one begins July 1. That means the Capitol is swarming with professional and grassroots lobbyists looking to cut, protect or enhance funding levels in a variety of programs.
On Thursday, supporters seeking an extra $40 million for preschool education had the mic for a news conference in the Rotunda. That’s the same funding increase sought by Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf for the 201819 budget now under negotiation with the Republican-controlled Legislature.
Advocates who run Pre-K for PA campaign released a poll they paid to conduct showing three quarters of likely voters support more money for “high-quality, publicly-funded” preschool. That is a 12 percentage point increase (63 percent to 75 percent) since the poll was last conducted in 2013.
The higher support was across the board, regardless of political persuasion or gender, according to the poll conducted by Harper Polling of Harrisburg.
Delaware County Daily Times: Delco Legislators Meet at Local Pre-k to Talk about Early Education
May 31, 2018 by Kathleen Carey
CLIFTON HEIGHTS >> Delco legislators were told to spend money now or they’ll spending five times as much later in trying to keep communities safe through educational investment and crime prevention.
Delaware County Katayoun Copeland joined “Fight Crime: Invest in Kids” at the Today’s Child Learning Center to talk about how early childhood funding could stem criminal activity through the Pre-K Counts program and others targeted to low-income families.
“We know, and just historically, we can’t arrest our way out of committing crimes,” Copeland said. “The (state) Department of Corrections did a report that almost 40 percent of all incoming state prison inmates have less than a 12th-grade education … and an average reading level of those inmates is about eighth grade.”
The district attorney cited a January 2018 report that identified difficulty reading in elementary school as an indicator of future criminal activity.
Among those in attendance was state Rep. Leanne Krueger-Braneky, D-161 of Swarthmore, who told about a discussion Pennsylvania Secretary of Corrections John Wetzel had with the state House Appropriations Committee.
“Given the cost of high quality pre-K and the cost of someone in our state correctional system, we could be putting five kids in high-quality pre-K for every person we are paying for in the correctional system,” she said.
Darby Township Police Chief Regina Price said the state spends $3.2 billion annually, or more than $43,000 per state prison inmate, on incarcerating adults.
Comparatively, the education advocates said, the Pre-K Counts program costs $8,500 per student.
Copeland said early education has impact.
“After they left preschool, you see the difference,” she said, adding that there is a correlation between high quality early education and better performance in school, smaller numbers of school suspensions and expulsions, fewer behavioral problems and a decrease in crime.
However, Copeland added, “Only 39 percent of children eligible for publicly funded pre-K are served, leaving more than 106,000 3- and 4-year-olds without that access.”
According to Bruce R. Clash, state director of “Fight Crime: Invest in Kids,” the percentage is higher here.
“In Delaware County, that percentage of unmet need is higher than the state average – 70 percent of 3- and 4-year-olds who qualify do not have access,” he said.
Read the full article here.
