BlogWood: MT Archives

Jeb!’s Parsimonious Pre-K Plan: Paltry Pay, 3 Hour Day

More details are starting to emerge about Jeb!’s voter mandated pre-k plan. Bottom line: the plan calls for teachers to be paid $13,000 per year (or less!), and, in order to enlarge the pool of people willing to take this miserly salary, almost no training will be required.

When the pre-k amendment was passed by voters, Jeb! had the state slap a $650 million cost on the program, but now he plans to spend a meager $300 million or so. Jeb! was hoping to defeat this initiative by touting the higher price tag, but how did the state decide on the lower figure that is being bandied about now? It’s based on daycare costs around the state, which tends to lend credence to those who call this bill little more than subsidized day care.

Don’t get me wrong - I’m not against subsidized day care, especially for folks who, like our future pre-k teachers, are struggling to make ends meet, but the amendment passed by voters called for a quality educational program, not just babysitting.

When Gov. Jeb Bush and state Republican leaders put a $650 million annual price tag on a proposed constitutional amendment that would create a state pre-kindergarten program, the figure was based on per-child spending of $4,320.

Two years later, with the amendment on the books, Republican leaders are pushing a considerably cheaper version: $2,000 to $3,000 per child, for a total in the $300 million range.

Why the gap between what Floridians were told before the 2002 vote and after?

"That's a good question," said Rep. Ralph Arza, R-Miami, the House chairman of a special joint committee that took public testimony on the issue Thursday. Arza said he was not aware of the original estimate.

It's a question lawmakers and Bush may have to answer in coming days, as early childhood education advocates press for policymakers to adopt the high-quality — but more expensive — recommendations of Bush's own pre-kindergarten task force.

Those recommendations include a six-hour day of instruction from teachers holding bachelor's degrees, with no more than 10 children per teacher.
......

On the final day of the regular session this year, lawmakers passed a bill with a three-hour day, no defined student-teacher ratio and a much lower standard for teachers. It was vetoed by Bush, who said it was not the "high-quality" product voters wanted.

The 2002 cost estimate was created as a result of a law pushed by Bush in an attempt to defeat the amendment reducing class sizes. The law, which required the state to tell voters how much an amendment would cost taxpayers, was eventually thrown out by the courts, but not before a panel of economists working for Bush and the legislature drew up an estimate ranging from $425 million to $650 million a year for the pre-kindergarten amendment.

Another constitutional amendment, subsequently passed, also requires the state to estimate the financial impact of amendments. It remains on the books.

The lower number was based on using existing federal Head Start money to help pay for the new program. The higher number was if that was not allowable, which wound up being the case. In either case, the economists used a figure of $4,320 per student — which far exceeds the $2,500 lawmakers considered in the spring or the $2,000 to $3,000 they are now considering.

Rep. Dudley Goodlette, the lead House negotiator on the bill, defended the lower amount.

"If it's not $4,300, it doesn't mean it's not a quality program," said Goodlette, R-Naples. "We're going to have a quality program. That's what they voted on. They didn't vote on what it was going to cost per student."

The current dollar value under consideration, though, may not win over many existing preschools with academic programs.

Barbara Hodges, director of Holy Comforter Episcopal School in Tallahassee and a member of Bush's original task force, said the median tuition for three- to 3 1/2 -hour programs at schools with Florida Council of Independent Schools accreditation was $4,437.

Arza, when asked about that number, pointed to the $2,700-per-child figure given by Daniel Morris, president of the Florida Association of Child Care Management, an accrediting group for day-care centers.

The fact that day-care groups have won such a prominent role in the crafting of the bill irks education advocates, who point out that the $2,700 figure was based on a $12-an-hour salary for teachers who would have only a Child Development Associate certificate, which can be obtained in less than a year.

That works out to an annual salary of $6,480 for a teacher running a three-hour program in a typical school year of 180 days, or about $13,000 if the teacher taught two three-hour sessions per day.