Tucson will be voting on Strong Start, an initiative to fund a preschool program through a half cent sales tax. San Antonio, Texas, has created a similar system, with significant differences. A long Politico article has the details. Here’s a brief summary.
San Antonio voted in a 1/8-cent tax to fund a pre-K program, with 54 percent voting yes. The size of the sales tax increase was the product of necessity; it was the most state law would allow. The city set up four pre-K centers, three of them built from scratch, to teach 2,000 children a year, a tenth of the city’s 4-year olds (Strong Start Tucson’s goal to place 8,000 three and four year olds).
The centers open at 7:15 a.m. for breakfast. The regular school day ends at 3 p.m., but about 40 percent of the kids stay for an extended day program for children of working parents, which goes to 6 p.m. Many parents say they couldn’t enroll their children in pre-school without the extended day, says Sculley. Pre-K 4 SA is free for 80 percent of the families, who qualify under the Texas law for disadvantaged or military households. The other 20 percent are middle-class families with an income of more than 185 percent of the poverty line—$44,000 for a family of four. They pay tuition based on a sliding scale.
The pre-K teachers’ average salary is $66,500, more than the average San Antonio teacher salary of $51,400. As a result, the centers have found it relatively easy to attract teachers, a number of whom have come from the city’s schools. Many of the teachers have received high ratings from an outside evaluator. The centers all use a curriculum from HighScope, based in Michigan, which emphasizes active, participatory learning over worksheets and skill drills. The program began in 2013, so it’s a bit early to judge the educational and social results over the long term, but the implementation of the program looks to have been smooth and successful.
The program has its local detractors, of course. And given San Antonio’s 1.5 million population, it educates a smaller percentage of the city’s children than Strong Start Tucson proposes. If Strong Start passes, the San Antonio model is one of a number of programs around the country the board should study and evaluate to see what can be learned.
This article appears in Aug 17-23, 2017.
Strong Start will never pass. It’s completely insane to set up a taxpayer-funded baby-sitting service when our roads are crumbling.
Plus no one likes TUSD.
bslap I protest. Some people do like public education and TUSD and spend their/our lives trying to improve it. In any case Strong Start is not even about TUSD, its about preschoolers. I suppose if you were raised without using any public services as a youngster then you can be a bitter and selfish oldster now. But my guess is that that was not the case. We all pretty much used services, like roads, telephones (at that time) and other items that were heavily subisidized by taxpayers.To be so selfish about paying forward what someone paid forward for you is just downright egotistical and shortsighted. This is what societies do for one another.
bslap, I don’t think you get IT, grades k-12 are all a taxpayer-funded “Youth-Sitting Service”; the age of the students attending school is not really the issue. A primary reason for public schools, and schools in general, is to provide a safe, secure place for our youth to be. Can you image what our society would be like if there were thousands of children (5 to 18) just hanging out around the house, the streets, parks, etc? Chaos. And yes, schools are also set up for learning.
Back to preschool education, baby sitting, the needs of our society have changed drastically during the past 80 years, as the result of the pill and equal opportunity for women, and technological advances, e.g.,dishwashers, frozen food, etc. Public schools reflect the needs of society. Society has changed and so will schools, and like or not, taxpayer supported preschool education will become part of change and our society will be better for IT.