Young children in Montgomery County may soon be stepping out of sandboxes to join their older peers in the classroom as lawmakers take steps to provide free schooling and child care for all 4-year-olds.
But as research studies near-unanimously proclaim the importance of such initiatives in narrowing schools’ achievement gaps and providing child care for working parents, shrinking budgets may bring a halt to widespread efforts.
“It depends what happens in the state budget, because we can’t even afford to pay for our kindergarten-12th grade system right now,” said Montgomery County Councilwoman Valerie Ervin, chairwoman of the council’s education committee.
Ervin, who has long championed universal preschool, formed a work group this week to report back in December on the most cost-effective ways to provide the service. She hopes that movement at the local level will produce strategies that can be implemented statewide, where Gov. Martin O’Malley has expressed his support.
In Georgia, where free preschool has been offered for 15 years, funding has come from the state lottery. Even the $3 billion put forth, however, hasn’t been able to keep up with demand — this year expected to be 79,000 4-year-olds. A recent study by the Atlanta-based Southern Education Foundation revealed that areas of the state with the largest influx of new residents did not have enough preschools.
“We know there’s an immediate need” in Montgomery County, Ervin said, adding that many in the county’s growing population of 3- and 4-year-olds are invisible to social services because of higher rates of transiency and lower rates of English.
In fact, all of the projected enrollment increases in Montgomery County schools are expected at the kindergarten through fifth grade level, even as middle and high school enrollment is projected to decrease. And while the overall population of higher-income students is expected to decrease, the population of low-income and minority students, especially Hispanics, is swelling.
For Ervin, it’s a matter of providing access for all families as soon as state and county budgets allow.
“There are waiting lists everywhere” for preschool and child care, Ervin said. “This isn’t just an issue for women in poverty, but across the board there’s a lack of quality educational preschool programs.”
