Even when the tidbits are mostly depressing, we enjoy our morning emails from Exchange Everyday - a free service of Child Care Information Exchange. You get them too, right?
So let’s start with the bright spots in the middle of an otherwise murky pre-k scene:
Funding Increases
While Maryland gets the local shout-out BIG thumbs up also go to Maine, Kentucky, and Nebraska Iowa, Maryland, Michigan, West Virginia, and Wisconsin for increasing per child and/or total pre-k funding.
Enrollment Increases
Happily, twenty-two states increased pre-K enrollment but, seriously, hats off to Vermont’s stunning increase of 24 percent. Wow.
The Otherwise Murky Scene
(with thanks to the National Institute of Early Education Research (NIEER) in its State of Preschool 2011 yearbook)
“Funding for state pre-K programs has plummeted by more than $700 per child nationwide over the past decade,” reports NIEER. The yearbook reported these findings:
- Funding for state pre-k programs has decreased nationally by more than $700 per child over the last 10 years.
- Per-student funding dropped by $145 in 2010-2011 alone, compared with the previous year.
- Overall funding for state pre-K programs, when adjusted for inflation, dipped for the second straight year, by $60 million nationally in 2010-2011.
- Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Pennsylvania cut total state pre-K spending by 10 percent or more from the previous year.
- Nine states cut pre-K enrollment, from 1 percent in Kentucky, Nebraska, and North Carolina, to 12 percent in New Mexico. Arizona entirely eliminated its program.
- Counting Arizona, 11 states do not offer pre-K: Hawaii, Idaho, Indiana, Mississippi, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming.
What’s the impact on your program? What’s your plan, together with local leaders and families, to make a positive difference?
Thank you, Directors…!
