The little boy clung to his mother as she carried him through the wooden half-door of the preschool classroom on Tuesday morning. Tears streamed down his face. It was going to be a tough drop-off.

While other children finished bananas, raisin bagels, and milk, Vraja Johnson, the lead teacher, ushered the mother and son toward a cozy corner in the back of the classroom. She spoke softly in English and Spanish to the nervous preschooler. Several minutes later, when his mother had slipped away, the boy nestled into a large blue beanbag clutching Tucker the Turtle, a stuffed animal that helps preschoolers understand that it’s OK to retreat into your shell — and to come back out when you’re ready.

It was the first day of preschool in the Otters classroom at El Nidito, a bilingual child care program at The Family Center in Fort Collins. The little boy and his 11 classmates are among 40,000 children enrolled in Colorado’s universal preschool program this year. The $349 million program offers tuition-free preschool — typically a half day — to all children in the year before kindergarten.

Now entering its third year, Colorado’s preschool for all program has smoothed out since its . At the time, application system errors, glitches in the , and last-minute reductions in preschool hours for some children caused widespread confusion and frustration.

A national early childhood group in the country for the share of children served by state-funded preschool. Around 70% of the state’s 4-year-olds are enrolled in the program, which generally covers about $6,000 a year in preschool costs per child.

But wrinkles remain. The state is still brought by religious preschools that objected to non-discrimination rules protecting LGBTQ children, families, and employees. Both suits are pending in federal appeals court. And the national early childhood group found that Colorado meets only two of 10 benchmarks meant to ensure that preschool classrooms are high quality.

Currently, the “universal preschool” label doesn’t indicate anything about the caliber of classroom a child will join. Rather, it simply indicates the state is paying for 10 to 30 hours of class time. Of about 2,000 preschools participating in the program, some have the state’s lowest rating and meet only basic health and safety standards.

Others, including El Nidito, which has been around for 25 years, have the state’s highest rating.

A morning in Johnson’s classroom makes it easy to see why. She and her co-teacher, an experienced sub named Maria Chavira, are warm, cheerful, and organized. Their young charges are curious, silly, and always in motion.

During breakfast, two boys held bananas up to their ears like phones.

“Ring, ring, ring. Hi, Henry,” one said as the other burst out laughing.

Nearby at the sensory table, as one little boy poured dried pinto beans through a cardboard tube, he said, “Did you ever watch ‘Boss Baby?’ The baby is a bossssss. Babies can’t be bosses!”

Meanwhile, the little boy who’d struggled to leave his mother was getting braver, slowly testing the waters of group play. One minute he crouched next to a little girl in front of a tree house play set. Later, he tried out bear and leopard hand puppets as the Boss Baby skeptic threw Tucker the Turtle up in the air next to him.

Johnson, who switched from a sales and marketing career to early childhood education in 2007, seems to have a sixth sense for detecting imminent meltdowns, skirmishes, and rule-bending.

She quickly peeled away from a conversation with a visitor when a little girl dressed in head-to-toe pink accidentally got a squiggle of red marker on her new cowboy boots.

“Your mom can get that out. The markers are washable,” Johnson said as tears welled in the preschooler’s eyes.

Then she averted the crisis with five words: “Do you want a hug?”

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

It’s increasingly clear that universal pre-K is coming. It probably won’t arrive in 2015. It might not be for a few more years. But this longtime progressive dream is going to happen — you can take that to the bank.

If any of you happen to be longtime readers who did, in fact, take my optimism to the bank, I’m sorry. Here in 2024, universal pre-K remains a distant dream — the National Institute for Early Education Research reports that just 35% of all 4 year olds were enrolled in public programs. U.S. pre-K enrollment actually dropped from to . 

I was hardly . Pre-K had relatively good political prospects. Washington, D.C.’s universal pre-K system — where I already had one child enrolled (and would eventually have three) — was about three years into full implementation, wasn’t far behind, and New York City’s and expansions were imminent. It wasn’t just the big blue cities getting in on the act! States like , and were investing in large pre-K programs. Almost every year, President Obama would introduce universal pre-K proposals — and by 2014, they were . 

Pre-K also benefited from solid research backing — children’s brains have particularly high levels of neuroplasticity in the early years, meaning that their developmental trajectories are than they will be in later years. Early education programs that expose young children to high-quality learning environments full of rich language and engaging activities can make the most of this moment and help advance children’s development.

A has found that early education investments help kids prepare for kindergarten; develop stronger academic, social, and linguistic abilities; and get better long-term life outcomes. Further, these impacts save the public money by helping schools work more efficiently — for instance, pre-K programs can . In 2022, researchers even found that the appeared to have because of the program: higher high school graduation rates, greater college enrollment rates, reduced criminal behavior and the like. 

Given our growing about how to make it , it’s especially relevant to note that well-funded universal pre-K programs can help parents . New research has corroborated these findings, showing that . Shoot, even at a macroeconomic level, pre-K’s a good policy bet — it’s overall more efficient and cheaper to have kids in quality early learning classrooms with student-teacher ratios around 8:1 than it is to have kids at home with one parent and only a sibling or two. 

Not coincidentally, other developed countries have already devoted considerable resources to a suite of . 

Nonetheless, like , , renaming Twitter as X,  universal pre-K hasn’t taken off. There are bright spots: is pushing towards universal coverage, ���𲹳ٳٱ���’s pre-K program is , and the Biden administration, while it still could, large federal early education investments. But on balance, a decade after my misbegotten prediction, pre-K’s political prospects are somewhat less rosy. has been uneven, and even New York City’s established pre-K program is . 

Washington, D.C.’s pre-K program that many — — believed was uniquely helpful for raising its quality. Some cities, like , are struggling with pre-K expansion, while pre-K class sizes are going up . Tennessee’s pre-K classrooms have been under increased scrutiny after of their effectiveness. 

What happened? Why hasn’t policy tracked the evidence that compelled so many of us a decade ago?

Let’s not overthink this. The main problem is politics. During the campaign, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris her party’s support for large national early education investments. If she’d won and Democrats had enough votes in Congress, universal pre-K would already be rolling out. This could still be true if Michigan’s Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, were to run and win the White House in 2028. 

National conservative leadership on pre-K has largely evaporated. Republicans who supported universal pre-K — like — have been more or less pushed out of the party. The campaign of president-elect Donald Trump didn’t take a clear position on any early education investments — let alone pre-K — but as president, , the federal government’s largest investment in early learning for 4 year olds. Furthermore, writing in the Heritage Foundation’s much-discussed “,” usually referred to as “Project 2025,” Trump’s conservative allies have called for Head Start to be defunded.

Back in 2015, it was possible to look forward and see a world where local, state and federal policymakers across the political spectrum would turn to universal pre-K as 1) a powerful intervention for improving kids’ linguistic, social and academic development; 2) a way to ease financial pressures for families and 3) a way to use public education dollars more efficiently. While it’s always a fool’s errand to trust strong data to deliver political progress, universal pre-K seemed like such a good fit for so many challenges facing U.S. public education — and American families. 

Obviously I was wrong. Wiser heads knew it right away. Soon after I wrote that TPM column, I met the late early education expert Ruby Takanishi for coffee. She pulled out a printed copy of my piece, plopped it on the table, and told me that I was not the first progressive to prophesy a major pre-K expansion just around the corner. 

“I hope you’re right,” she said with a wry smile, “but I bet you won’t be the last.” 

California is a notable, laudable exception to this trend. , under the leadership of Gov. Gavin Newsom, the state embarked on an ambitious effort to more than double its number of public pre-K and transitional kindergarten (or “TK”) seats for 4-year-old Californians from just over 147,000 to roughly 400,000. (TK began in 2008 for children who just missed the state’s cutoff for kindergarten enrollment, but has significantly expanded to serve more 4-year-olds since 2021). 

This would be a major accomplishment for the state and for early education advocates. The key, of course, is to show how policymakers can dramatically grow pre-K and TK access while maintaining crucial quality elements that support children’s development. The best way to do that is to ensure that the state’s new early education classrooms have great teachers prepared to meet their students’ needs. 

According to the Migration Policy Institute, in 2022, of California children under 5 years old have at least one parent who speaks a non-English language at home. As such, it’s particularly that the state fill its new pre-K and TK classrooms with bilingual early educators. 

How’s the state doing at building bilingualism into its new public early education system? Let’s start with the good news. California had a wealth of bilingual early educators before it launched its early education expansion. In 2020, according to data from the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at UC-Berkeley, nearly half of staff members working in early childhood education centers , and around 40% identified as Latina. Furthermore, as of that year, the state’s early educators were overwhelmingly (98%) women, and had, on average, working in early childhood education settings. As California expands its early education system to fund — and operate — the bulk of classrooms for its 4-year-olds, this diverse workforce provides a strong foundation of experience. 

In a , which I co-authored with my colleague Jonathan Zabala in my role as a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, we uncovered something troubling. The requirements to become an early educator in the state’s growing public early education system are likely to exclude many of these women — and their valuable linguistic and cultural assets — from careers in the state’s growing public early education system. As we note in the report, California is rolling out a new kind of credential, which, over time, will become the standard for TK teachers. That credential “requires candidates to have a bachelor’s degree, complete specific coursework and assessments demonstrating competence, pass the CalTPA, and perform 600 hours of student teaching.”

These credential requirements reflect a choice by state policymakers to align TK teaching credentials with K–12 requirements, which are generally more stringent than early education requirements. This makes California’s public TK classrooms more accessible to K–12 public school teachers whose credentialing largely aligns, but it places these jobs out of reach for many early educators with decades of experience working in private pre-K classrooms.

In the American early care and education system, credentialing and licensure is complicated. Regulations vary by state and there’s no single model that’s been written in the stars as the one true and best policy. Rather, the rules policymakers set reflect a host of tradeoffs that influence the demographics of the teachers children get. And because of an array of factors both substantively wide and historically deep — , racial and ethnic wealth gaps, cost increases in higher education, and more — even seemingly neutral training requirements can produce a surprisingly homogeneous teaching workforce ill-suited to supporting a diverse population of students. 

For instance, there’s nothing inherently racist or monolingually-biased about requiring teacher candidates to practice their future profession as student teachers before getting their license to be a lead teacher. But if the clinical hours spent as a student teacher aren’t paid, even though student teachers are still required to pay tuition to their training programs during that time, then candidates without significant financial resources may be less likely to make it over this hurdle. And that’s part of why, in a country where and are disproportionately likely to be growing up below — or near — the poverty line, we have such persistent shortages of bilingual teachers and teachers of color. 

Nearly every teacher credential requirement involves this sort of tradeoff — for early educators or for K–12 teachers. The more standardized and less flexible a state’s licensure system is, the more difficult it can be for diverse candidates to reach the classroom. What’s more, as we note in our report, “frustratingly, research indicates that many licensure requirements don’t generally produce higher-quality instruction or better outcomes for students.” 

What can California policymakers do to ensure that more of their current, experienced, linguistically diverse early educators reach the state’s new pre-K and TK classrooms? Well, when it comes to policy reforms for diversifying the teacher workforce, there really are only two main options. Policymakers can either: 

1) Pursue investments that can provide financial support for non-traditional teacher candidates going through traditional training and licensure systems, including scholarships, large stipends for student-teaching and additional pay to help people miss work to go to classes. 

2) Introduce more flexibility into their credential requirements, such as alternative training pathways, credential waivers and equivalency provisions, which would make it possible for candidates with years of early childhood experience to be counted toward clinical hours.

That’s it. There really isn’t some other clever mechanism. Either California needs to invest significantly more so that more bilingual early educator candidates get the (mostly monolingual) credentials the state requires or it needs to change the credentials it requires. 

So, as we note in the report, California policymakers urgently need reforms that help early childhood educators have their “language skills and instructional expertise as partially or fully equivalent to the credentials required for becoming a TK teacher.” This could involve creating new provisional credentials that allow long-time early educators to become lead TK teachers in the new public system for five to seven years while they complete further training. It could involve major state investments in waiving tuition or providing student teaching stipends for bilingual TK teacher candidates. 

The story of the last big cycle of early education investments makes it clear that effective implementation matters at least as much as political momentum. And when it comes to supporting young, linguistically diverse kids, that means building systems that support the training and hiring of bilingual early educators. California is an emerging national leader in early education, so it’s critical that it gets this early education expansion right. The state already has the bilingual teacher candidates it needs. The next big step is making sure it keeps them in its new public early education system. 

“If we had to pay for a tuition-based program, she wouldn’t be going,” Gurgul said, who lives in Allen Park with her family. “It’s a big extra cost. Do you pay however many hundreds of dollars a month for preschool? Or do you pay for your car insurance?“

Timing worked in Gurgul’s favor: This summer, Michigan joined a handful of  states in moving closer to offering “Universal Pre-K,” for four-year-olds. It’s an elusive and much-debated goal of advocates nationally, in which state-funded preschool is available and free for all families.

Michigan’s Democrat-majority state legislature this year passed an $85 million increase in preschool funding as a step toward Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s goal of free preschool for all by 2027. The increase covers the cost of 6,800 more preschool seats, both in schools and in private child care centers — meaning the state is now offering preschool to about half of its 118,000 four-year-olds.

The increase immediately allowed Gurgul’s daughter, 4, to attend one of two new classrooms the Allen Park Early Childhood Center opened this fall using the new state money. For Gurgul it’s a big win, even if Michigan still falls short of the 70% preschool enrollment experts define as true “universal” preschool.

“She’s excited every morning,” Gurgul said. “She wakes up and she jumps out of bed and asks, ‘Is it a school day?’ She’s excited to get up and go.”

For many, including Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden who pushed, but failed, to create preschool for every child, the early education programs are as vital to children’s academic and emotional development as kindergarten through high school. 

But there’s no national consensus on what age school should start for children. Even kindergarten isn’t universal, with only .

And , often , about preschool’s impact and whether it is worth the money.

An all-time high of 35% of four-year-olds nationally attended preschool in the 2022-23 school year. But only six states — Florida, Iowa, Oklahoma, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wisconsin — and Washington, D.C, have full, free preschool, according to the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University. 

Several other states’ governors, including Illinois Gov. Elliot Pritzker, are , with a goal of full, free preschool. 

Massachusetts Gov. Maureen Healey and the state’s legislature have that were once prosperous but have declined as industry moved away.

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis is trying to offer preschool to all four-year-olds, starting with those from low-income families and facing other challenges, such as homelessness. But at the start and have made progress a challenge. 

And California Gov. Gavin Newsom has been inching toward

NIEER reported this spring that 10 states are committed to adding universal preschool, but warned, “Most of those states are far from reaching that goal.”

“A key question for the future is whether states will increase investments enough to keep promises regarding program expansion and quality, including adequate pay for the workforce,” NIEER officials said this spring. 

In Michigan, Gov. Whitmer, a Democrat, used her 2023 State of the State Address to call for expanding the state’s preschool program and making it free for all four-year olds by 2027. 

“This investment will ensure children arrive at kindergarten ready to learn and saves their families upwards of $10,000 a year,” she said. “It helps parents, especially moms, go back to work. And it will launch hundreds more preschool classrooms across Michigan, supporting thousands of jobs.”

Last year, the state agreed to spend $72.4 million more to pay for five-day preschool instead of just four, and increased the family income limit for free preschool from 250% of the federal poverty level to 300%, or $93,000 for a family of four.

This year, Whitmer and the state legislature increased preschool funding by $85 million to add 6,800 new preschool seats. The state also made more middle-class families eligible by again relaxing state income limits to 400% of poverty level, or $124,800 for a family of four.

The increases passed over strong Republican opposition, as is common in state debates. 

Republican State Rep. Nancy DeBoer said the bill, which also covered other school funding issues, diverts money from more important priorities, such as school safety or increasing funding for schools.

“Making our future generations a priority is common sense,” she told the House just before the bill passed. “Neglecting them is a new idea – one that will first hurt our kids and later the entire state. It doesn’t have to be this way.”

And Molly Macec, director of education policy for the right-leaning Mackinac Institute, blasted Whitmer’s plan as “wasteful, unnecessary, unfair” for adding higher-income students. Studies of preschool impact typically show greater effects for low-income students.

“Her PreK for All plan will do nothing more than subsidize preschool for wealthier families,” . “It’s a waste of time and money for the state to pay the bills of people who don’t need help.”

Though Whitmer and staff , the state’s not there yet. By most definitions, universal preschool requires about 70% of the state’s four-year-olds to attend to count. That percentage below 100% allows for families who choose not to enroll their children.

Even if all 59,000 funded seats in Michigan are filled this year — a long shot because thousands of seats sit open each year — the state program would only serve about half of Michigan’s 118,000 four-year-olds.

Use of available seats has lagged, advocates believe, because of transportation issues, parents not knowing their children are eligible, and because preschool schedules don’t always line up with family work hours.

Jefftrey Cappizano, president of The Policy Equity Group, a non-profit that joined several others in creating a , called the increases “a decent step” toward that goal. He and the report noted that, like many states, Michigan needs to add many more preschool seats as well as train more teachers to support such explosive  growth. 

Preschool and child care staffing is a challenge everywhere. After employees left, staffing levels nationally have only

“You have to make sure that the infrastructure is there,” Cappizano said.

He and other preschool advocates also dismissed claims only affluent families benefit from the new income limits. Low-income students have priority under state law, as do those with other challenges such as having parents with low education levels or families that primarily speak another language.

And preschools that may serve the neediest students don’t always fill, so enrolling other students for those spots helps pay for the school and teachers.

Adding new seats also allows preschools to expand or new ones to open in areas that are low income.

“The expansion… isn’t just going to expand to the middle class,” said Eileen Storer-Smith, a program officer of the William K. Kellogg Foundation, which has made advancing preschool in Detroit a priority. “It’s going to expand to children who are eligible, where there just wasn’t a seat for them.”

Zina Davis, founder of the Children of the Rising Sun Empowerment Center, a child care and preschool center in Detroit, said the increases haven’t allowed her to expand yet, but will soon. She is planning a second center in the city and also looks forward to some three-year-olds at her center with higher-income families becoming eligible for state funding when they turn four.

The state funding changes also let her increase pay for her staff.

“It benefits everybody,” Davis said. “It benefits the programs for sustainability. It benefits the families, because now we have more slots available. And it also benefits the staff that are able to get livable wages.”

Parents with children enrolled in a universal pre-kindergarten program in New Haven, Connecticut, increased their earnings by an average of 20.9%, according to a published by the National Bureau of Economic Research this week.

Families had more money because the pre-K reduced their child care costs while also enabling them to work more hours.

The study is sure to be ammunition in Minnesota’s longstanding debate about child care and universal pre-K, which has been a priority of some progressives for years. Former Gov. Mark Dayton made a strong push for pre-K in 2015 but was thwarted by the GOP-controlled House.

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“Universal pre-K” refers to programs that are free and aren’t means-tested, meaning they are available to all families regardless of household income. The New Haven program in the study had a limited number of slots, which were distributed using a lottery system, allowing researchers to compare the outcomes of families in the program to those who didn’t get a slot.

The authors found that for every dollar spent by the government to support the program, parents took home an additional $5.50, a better return on investment than the and the .

The New Haven universal pre-K program offered up to 10 hours of child care per day — which was key to the study’s findings.

Parents whose children were enrolled in the universal pre-K program got an average of 11 more hours of child care coverage per week, compared to parents of children in other child care programs.

The additional child care coverage allowed parents to work an average of 12 hours per week more than parents with other forms of child care — and reap the economic benefits.

Parents with children in other child care programs caught up to the hours and earnings of universal pre-K parents by the time their kids entered middle school.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Minnesota Reformer maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor J. Patrick Coolican for questions: info@minnesotareformer.com. Follow Minnesota Reformer on and .

When Tanya Gillespie-Lambert goes to an event in a local park in Camden, New Jersey, she takes a handful of brochures about free preschool with her. She has no hesitation about approaching strangers — moms with kids especially — to plug the service in the local public school district, where she’s director of community and parent involvement.

Gillespie-Lambert and her team also hold door-knocking events several times a year to put the word out on free pre-K, dressing up in matching blue T-shirts and hats. That’s in addition to billboards, public service announcements and posters all over town.

“I still get a little shocked when they don’t know about it,” she said in an interview. “They always say, ‘I didn’t know they could start when they were 3 years old, and they don’t have to be potty trained. And it’s free?’”

Forty-four states offer some free preschool, and states from Colorado to Mississippi are expanding their programs. But even when states claim to have “universal” pre-K for 4-year-olds and sometimes 3-year-olds, some of the most comprehensive programs only serve a slice of the kids who are eligible.

There’s a host of reasons for that, beyond a lack of awareness. Some states only provide funding for 10 or 15 hours of preschool per week. Some parents can’t afford the cost of before- and after-care, or have transportation problems if there’s no bus. In some states, private pre-K providers, who often get state money for their pre-K programs, oppose shifting more state funds to public schools. And many states have a shortage of early education teachers and assistants, limiting the number of slots they can provide.

Studies show preschool is highly beneficial for young children, giving them a jump on reading and math skills and the socialization that are key to later school success. Preschool differs from child care, which has less emphasis on academics and often doesn’t employ certified teachers. But private preschool is costly, making it difficult for parents with lower incomes to afford pre-K unless it’s state-funded.

“Everybody doesn’t define ‘universal’ the same way,” said Steven Barnett, senior co-director of the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University. “You can’t just wave a magic wand.”

Barnett said a state pre-K program should not be considered universal if there’s a cap on funding or a waitlist for slots. He advocates for states to treat pre-K like first grade — automatically available. But providing universal preschool is expensive for states.

Participation varies

More than 1.6 million 3- and 4-year-olds attended state-funded preschools in the 2022-2023 school year, with states serving 7% of 3-year-olds and 35% of 4-year-olds, according to Barnett’s institute.

But participation varies widely from state to state. The number of 4-year-olds enrolled in state-funded pre-K programs in the 2022-2023 school year ranged from a high of 67% in Florida, Iowa, Oklahoma and West Virginia to single digits in Alaska, Missouri, Nevada, Delaware, North Dakota, Arizona, Hawaii and Utah, according to the institute.

Six states have no state-funded preschool: Idaho, Indiana, Montana, New Hampshire, South Dakota and Wyoming.

Some states are starting pre-K programs or expanding them. Mississippi doubled the number of kids in preschool in 2022-23 from the previous year to more than 5,300, added another 3,000 seats in 2023-24 and committed to future expansion, .

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, signed a universal preschool bill in April 2022, and classes started in the 2023-24 school year. But Colorado’s program provides only 15 hours of free preschool per week in the year before kindergarten.

Similarly, Vermont’s universal pre-K program, enacted in 2014, provides only 10 hours a week of free school.

In addition to being problematic for parents who work 40 hours a week, 10 hours a week of preschool is not enough to provide quality learning, Barnett said. “It has to be a big enough dosage … of truly high-quality education.”

Vermont state Sen. Ruth Hardy, a Democrat, called the program “technically universal” because all 4-year-olds are allowed to participate but acknowledged there are gaps. She filed a last year that would have expanded the pre-K program to include full school days but it died, amid other expansions to child care and educational priorities.

Hardy, a former educator and school board member, said in an interview that the legislature did enact a measure to study expanding pre-K to all 3- and 4-year-olds and report back by July 2026.

It was part of a larger that focused on providing more child care subsidies, including for families with incomes up to “middle-class or close to upper-middle-class levels,” she said. To pay for it, the state instituted a new payroll tax of 0.44%. Employers may choose to pay all of it or deduct up to 0.11% of it from employees' wages.

Concerns about access

Hardy said that in Vermont, as well as other states, a roadblock to expanding public pre-K programs is the “tension” between public and private schools. Many states take a “mixed delivery” approach to public preschool, under which pre-K is offered in settings ranging from public schools to community-based centers to private schools. But private providers sometimes see expanding the public preschools as competition.

Aly Richards, CEO of Let’s Grow Kids, a Vermont child care advocacy organization, said the group’s concern is equitable access to pre-K programs, especially when parents need kids in all-day instruction and public programs only operate on school-day hours, while private programs often last all workday.

“Working-class families can’t leave their job in the middle of the day if they have to move their kid,” she said.

She also said there is often not enough room in nearby public schools to accommodate all the children who want pre-K programs.

Similar tension is roiling efforts to expand public pre-K in Michigan. Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Democratic lawmakers want to make more children eligible, but private schools worry that legislative proposals would eliminate requirements that a percentage of slots go to private providers and thereby cut their state funding.

In Hawaii — which has one of the highest-quality public preschool programs, according to the National Institute for Early Education Research — the problem is getting enough educators into the classrooms.

Hawaii plans to open 44 more classrooms for 3- and 4-year-olds in the fall, bringing the state’s total to about 90, Lt. Gov. Sylvia Luke, a Democrat, said in a statement. But more staffing is needed if the state is going to reach its goal of getting all 3- and 4-year-olds in preschool by 2032, The Associated Press .

California is in the third year of a four-year phase-in of a universal pre-K program launched in the 2021-22 state budget. A draft report from the Learning Policy Institute, a California educational research group, found that while most school districts in the state are on track toward getting all 4-year-olds and income-eligible 3-year-olds in pre-K, staffing is a problem and is expected to get worse as new teacher requirements go into effect.

Hanna Melnick, a senior policy adviser at the Learning Policy Institute and one of the co-authors of the report, said it’s unclear how many of the eligible kids are actually taking advantage of the pre-K program.

Some families can’t afford before- and after-care, she said. “Extended care is a really critical barrier. And some families want more of a familylike environment [for their preschoolers]. They might not feel comfortable using out-of-home care or care in a school setting.”

Back in New Jersey, Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy announced in March that an additional $11 million in state funding had been secured to bring preschool to 16 more school districts in the state.

But despite the effort, workers such as Gillespie-Lambert need to keep walking neighborhoods.

“People don’t read,” she said. “We found canvassing — not just flyers, but having a conversation with them — seems to work a lot better.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on and .

Tomorrow, New Mexico residents will vote on , to allocate permanent funding toward early childhood education, which includes child care, pre-K and home visits. For a state that ranks last for “,” the focus of child care is one way to improve outcomes and well-being for residents.

Please note that the ballot initiative was the culmination of a 10-year effort from advocacy groups to provide a dedicated funding stream for early childhood. This has the potential to change the future of work and child care: states are often the Petri dishes for making sweeping policy changes, so New Mexico’s efforts and results will be closely watched by advocates.

One policy expert is already keeping a close eye on the move to near-universal care. Hailey Heinz, deputy director of the University of New Mexico Cradle to Career Policy Institute, will be one of the experts to measure the efficacy of the state’s child care program and how it affects outcomes.

In this Q&A with Early Learning Nation, Heinz explains how New Mexico’s child care landscape has changed and what policy advocates across the country should be watching for.

Rebecca Gale: Let’s start off with New Mexico’s existing progress on child care: the money set aside for child care and early education has done well during the  oil boom.  How has that set the landscape for what’s happening now?

Hailey Heinz: It’s important to understand that New Mexico did not become interested in early childhood this year, or during the pandemic or just a few years ago. The state has had a long interest in funding early childhood; It has spent decades at the bottom of national rankings about child well-being, so there’s political will and urgency around figuring out how to improve the lives of families and children.

In terms of setting the landscape, in 2019, New Mexico created a dedicated cabinet department for early childhood, and in 2020, the legislature created the Early Childhood Trust Fund. But I can point back further to other choices that set the stage: the 2018 legislature, under a Republican Governor, gave $25 million in new state dollars to subsidize child care systems, rather than just relying on federal block grants, which is how most state child care is funded. In 2013, New Mexico passed the Home Visiting Accountability Act, and since 2005, New Mexico has had high-quality, state-funded pre-K. New Mexico has been punching above its weight on early childhood for 20 years, with a really dedicated group of advocates, and it’s often been bipartisan in nature.

RG: There’s a lot of research about the positive effects of universal pre-K programs, but less about the positive effects of child care, specifically. Without having to wait 20 years to look at graduation rates, are there ways that New Mexico can know if their programs are working?

HH: I think we’ll see a mix of things we can measure right away and other things that take a long time. And, it will be up to people with jobs like mine to measure it correctly.

The funding will support different types of programs, including New Mexico’s pre-K. We have studied pre-K and we know it has strong outcomes, including improved 3rd grade reading and better rates of high school graduation.

For a program like the home visiting, we are looking at building strong relationships between babies and caregivers. This work is important to do but has a later payoff. The big bet we are making with home visiting is that it will build the capacity of families to be more patient, resilient and supported. It’s going to take years to see the results of that. Knowing that families become more supportive caregivers is good, but that’s a long way out for us to really know it’s successful.

One of the things that really appeals to me as a child-care scholar is that high quality care has an impact on families right away. Women’s labor participation, within a year or two, will see a shift as women were able to return to the labor force if they wished to. It can be a subtle shift too with women working more, or being more willing to take a promotion or go full time without being worried about losing their child care assistance. In a state like New Mexico, with its huge rates of economic insecurity, reliable stable child care makes a difference.

On the child-level benefits for near-universal child care, it’s less clear in the research than it is for something like pre-K. But I think NM is well-positioned to work on that, too. We have a quality system. Based on pre-K standards, we know pre-K gets results. But it’s not the same with child care because access is different. With pre-K, the family signs up; they get a year of pre-K; they don’t have to prove eligibility; and they get free pre-K for the entire year.

Child care assistance has historically been more of a welfare model where parents need to show they are needy and deserving. Because circumstances and eligibility can change, kids cycle in and out of the program so they don’t get that consistent, extended access. As access to child care improves, the results may start to look more like pre-K and we’ll see more of the child-level outcomes, but that can take longer.

RG: New Mexico is not offering universal child care, but it’s pretty close. A family of four can access benefits with income up to about $110,000 per year (400% of the poverty line) in a state where the overall median household income is about $51,000 per year. For families above that eligibility line, will they see a benefit to the child care programs? Has that been a difficult political issue?

HH: Expanded investment in the child care sector and expanded subsidy eligibility benefits all families with children who use child care because it’s a way to infuse funding into a sector that is really cash-starved, especially during the pandemic. Families, including those who pay privately, benefit from stable quality care. Public investment helps build quality capacity for everybody.

In New Mexico, our subsidy policy changes meant that providers received more payment for a subsidy than from families who were private payers — which has been the reverse for most states. Interesting to see what happens with that — I am keeping my eye on that.

It hasn’t been a difficult political issue. People in households earning more than $100K are not accustomed to qualifying for direct public benefits. They don’t expect them and it’s not like something has been taken away. A lot of other parts of the early childhood system are universal. Our pre-K program does not have an income qualification. Most of our home visiting programs have universal eligibility. New Mexico has taken a universalistic approach; the eligibility ceiling is high enough that I haven’t heard blowback about it.

RG: The American Rescue Plan funds inspired many states to innovate with early child care, and New Mexico attempted to change the cost modeling for child care, meaning paying providers what child care costs, not the market rate of what they could sell it for. Do you see that aspect having national reverberations, particularly in light of providers losing staff to higher paying jobs?

HH: Yes. The most interesting thing going on with the cost modeling is the potential to improve wages and working conditions for the child care staff. Policymakers can use the cost modeling study as a basis to say, “We did a study and this is what we think child care costs per toddler if we pay everyone $12 an hour.” What would it cost at $15? $18? We can set rates that way, but it’s capped at what parents can pay.

Part of the exciting potential is that it has better positioned New Mexico to address compensation through the subsidy system. If you can reach a point where many of your child care slots are paid for by subsidy, it is big enough in your system that you can use it to move the needle on something like compensation.

I think wages and working conditions are really the next big frontier in early childhood that must be solved to achieve anything else. You can’t expand access if you can’t hire enough people. And you won’t get to quality outcomes unless you have a stable workforce. Child care has a tragically underpaid workforce. This is where I have the most hope that the permanent fund initiative will be a game changer.

New Mexico has managed to do amazing things. But we have done it on the backs of the workers—mostly women and women of color—who have not earned enough to sustain the system.

RG: You mentioned you think the ballot initiative will pass, but that so much of the radical change on child care has happened already. How long do you think it will take for state residents to feel that this shift has made a difference?

HH: It’s not obvious to a family if the lead teacher in their child’s infant room gets a raise, but families complain when there is high turnover in their child care system. Better pay and working conditions promote stability, and families should see shortly thereafter, an enhanced stability because the workforce isn’t being tempted away to go work in retail or fast food.

The funding gives New Mexico a chance to keep doing what we are doing. States did a lot of interesting things. I predict there we’ll see a thousand dissertations on what states did with ARPA funding.

There is some hand-wringing about what happens when federal funds go away. But some of what we feel here is that it won’t go away. What I feel is that it won’t stop. It’s part of what makes New Mexico unique, to say, “Yeah this isn’t temporary. We don’t think it should stop.” We are going to be the ones to keep this early childhood investment going.

Few characters have had a more remarkable pandemic trajectory than geographer Rebekah Jones, who rose to fame after she accused the state of Florida of trying to doctor its COVID cases and then released a video of police raiding her home that went viral in December 2020.

In an exclusive conversation with ����Ӱ��, the whistleblower data scientist now running for Congress talked about how having a child with autism informed her education platform, revealed a possible plea agreement in her pending criminal case and addressed how she would confront her opponent, Rep. Matt Gaetz, about sex trafficking allegations from a surprisingly personal perspective. 

Jones first entered the public eye in May 2020 when she was fired from the Florida Department of Health, where she had helped build the state’s dashboard to monitor COVID cases and deaths. State officials said her dismissal was due to insubordination. But Jones claims she was let go because she refused to manipulate data to downplay the spread of the virus.

An outspoken critic of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, Jones garnered further attention for launching an independent dashboard counting Florida COVID cases and also a of infections in schools, in partnership with FinMango.

Her feud with the governor reached a peak in December 2020 when police raided her Tallahassee home, executing a search warrant and seizing her computer hardware. A video of the incident that Jones posted on social media went viral, earning her sympathy from those who saw her as unfairly targeted by the DeSantis administration.

A month later, just after she was named , Jones was charged with a felony, accusing her of illegally accessing a state computer system and sending an unauthorized mass message urging state employees to speak out on COVID. 

In May 2021, the data scientist was granted whistleblower protections, but a May 2022 investigation by the state inspector general found no evidence supporting her contention that she had been instructed to falsify records. A in June, however, concluded that the state undercounted COVID cases and deaths, hampering Florida’s early pandemic response.

All the while, Jones has denied wrongdoing. She shared a copy of a deferred prosecution agreement with ����Ӱ�� that includes suggested changes by her lawyer and lays out a deal where she would admit to sending an unauthorized email after she was terminated by the state health department. If she meets all the conditions, primarily by not violating any state, federal or local laws and performing 150 hours of community service during the stated period, the charges would be dropped. Jones said she is considering it; the state attorney’s office said they could not comment on any updates in the case. 

Simultaneously, the Floridian launched a bid for a U.S. House seat in the state’s deeply red northwest corner. After a complicated legal back-and-forth that nearly blocked her from the ballot, her name was restored a day before the Democratic primary, which she won handily with more than 60% of the vote. 

She will face the hard-right conservative Gaetz, who claimed his own primary victory after a by former President Donald Trump and fending off charges from his GOP rival that he was the FBI informant who spurred the Mar-a-Lago raid. Gaetz is being investigated by the Justice Department over allegations he engaged a 17-year-old girl in sexual activity across state lines. 

����Ӱ�� caught up with Jones to hear about her vision for education policy — and the roller coaster ride she’s been on since the pandemic.

This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

����Ӱ��: A lot has happened to you over the last couple years. Can you update those who might not know the whole story?

Jones: Sadly, there’s not a whole lot of updates. My whistleblower case is still pending with the state of Florida. It’s been over two years. We’re still waiting [for it to be resolved] so we can sue.

I just won the Democratic nomination for Congress. There was a month of voting that was active between the time when mail ballots went out and Election Day, and I was only free and clear on the ballot for one day of all voting. And we still crushed it. 

But 10 weeks from today is the election, so we’re full steam ahead working on that. I’m living in Navarre in Northwest Florida with my family. I know people think my life is so exciting, and I guess it’s kind of crazy, but most of the time it’s just the day-to-day grind.

There are some folks who would want to take a break from the public eye after all that, but you’re running for Congress. Why?

I did take a break. After my home was raided, I moved my family less than three weeks later out of the state to protect them. I didn’t do a lot of press. I led a data hero awards program to recognize some of the people like me who weren’t getting the kind of viral attention that I got. I stepped back, but nothing got better. 

It was actually the day I got whistleblower protection that I decided to move back and fight.

A number of things stood out to me from your education platform, like the national student “Bill of Rights” and the mandatory trainings to prevent race- and gender-based discrimination. Can you tell me more about your education plans and what inspires them?

Like all of my platforms, it’s informed by people that are in the profession or who are subject to the policies that we’re writing, including students. It seems strange to have regulations on students in schools and not include their input. 

Florida has been a leading example for me on how not to manage education policy. Teachers are disrespected, we don’t pay them and, within the classrooms, students have exactly zero rights. I want to change that. 

School should be a place where kids feel safe, where they’re not hungry, where they’re encouraged to challenge themselves to think differently than those around them, to think differently from their teachers, differently from their parents, to explore. 

That has been all but stripped from public education, especially by people like DeSantis and the moms for tyranny group.

Moms for tyranny, you’re referring to ?

Yes. They don’t like me because I tracked COVID in schools.

You used to be an instructor at Florida State University. You’re also a mom of a child with autism. How do those roles inform your perspective?

Well, my son has gone to Florida public schools every grade since kindergarten. There hasn’t been a year where there haven’t been problems. A school counselor told me once she can tell the difference between a bad kid and a disability. This would have been when my son was like 6 or 7 years old and was not a bad kid. He just couldn’t sit still and it seemed like he was ignoring people and he wasn’t. 

Autism, of course, is a spectrum and manifests differently. His is more behavioral. He’s considered high functioning, he’s extremely brilliant. It’s part of what gets him in trouble is he’s always the first to finish his coursework and then he’s just left to sit there and then gets into trouble. There are a lot of different types of disabilities and that one, unfortunately, is being very slowly recognized within the classroom. 

You’re up against U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz. Your district’s quite red. But you’re not shying away from culture wars issues. Can that message get you elected in Florida’s Panhandle?

The thing is, I’m not actually focusing on their cultural terrorism. I’m focusing on the maintenance things that Matt Gaetz has failed to do. Things like the fact that Navarre, Florida has 38,000 people and one tiny post office that floods every time there’s a sprinkle. They need a second one. I probably am going to spend the first full year [in office] just catching up on all the stuff he was supposed to do that’s noncontroversial before anything big and heated comes up. 

But yeah, I don’t bend over principles and that can seem like it’s cultural war — I like to say terrorism — but that’s who I am and who I’ve always been. I’m not going to vote against women’s rights. I speak to people who don’t support women’s rights with respect and try to understand where they’re coming from. Frankly, I do understand where they’re coming from. But it doesn’t have any bearing on how me or my daughter are able to make health care choices. 

You’d be surprised. I’ve spoken to a lot of people who’ve walked up to me and have said, “I’m a Christian and I can’t support you if you support abortion.” And then I talk to them, and they’ll sign a petition by the time they’re walking away.

How do you navigate those conversations?

I spoke to a guy the other day, he was absolutely against trans rights and gender-affirming care. He came up to our booth at one of our events. I explained to him there is an actual biological condition that leads to being a different gender physiologically than what you are chemically in your brain. And there’s an actual mismatch. He apparently didn’t even know that. And I said, “Well, if there was a test that could show you the brain chemistry of a person whose gender does not match their physical body, would you support that person having some kind of transition care while they’re still a teenager?” And we got this guy to agree to it. He was coming from a place of hearing that children were being mutilated by the doctors and going on to regret it.

People are good. This entire campaign is based on the idea that people fundamentally are good. And given the opportunity to do the right thing, without all the noise, in the quiet of the ballot box or at home, they’ll do the right thing. 

I’ve spent my entire life on that concept. Me coming forward and not knowing if anybody would support me, anybody would believe me, anybody would care. I thought people had a right to know and that people would do the right thing. And they have. And I believe that that will carry us a lot further than anybody’s giving us credit for.

Maybe this is the right time to ask, how do you estimate your [electoral] chances? What shot do you give yourself?

I don’t have any illusions about how difficult it’s going to be. 

We’ve done three different polls, so far. Two of them have us ahead between two and six points. Matt Gaetz is very loathed. All the sex trafficking scandal has broken out since the last election. The Republican infrastructure isn’t happy with him. So he’s pretty isolated. 

He’s going to try to play at this whole MAGA thing as much as possible and make it seem like I’m the enemy of MAGA, but I’m not. And he didn’t anticipate that. We welcome any Trump supporters into our camp to defeat Gaetz. They’re more than welcome. 

I think it’s gonna come down to a very small number of voters.

So many people draw really stark political lines. You’re saying you welcome Trump voters. How do you navigate that alongside, if we’re talking about education, policies like universal pre-K or anti-bias training, which have taken a lot of heat from the right wing?

The right wing is not a homogenous glob any more than the left is. The left is notorious for being fragmented, for having different views and opinions and positions within its own kind of territory. The right is not any different. 

People here support universal pre-K. Most of the people who live here are working-class families. Day care across the country is ridiculously expensive. It can be upwards of $900 on average per person and that’s prohibitively expensive for a lot of people. We’ve had voluntary pre-K in the state for a while, which is a partial day, and then at most facilities, you can pay to extend the day to a full working day. And parents really need that. So they’re already on board. I don’t even have to do much convincing. It’s when we get caught in these ideological debates that things get sticky. And I avoid that, because we have problems right here, right now that need to be dealt with. 

We’ve got to stop with Democrats not allowing an acceptable bridge over to our party from people who supported Trump. Because that is how we stay on either side of the river. Nothing ever changes. And we need to create a pathway for people to say, “Look, I’m not going to ask you who you voted for in 2016 or 2020 and I, frankly, don’t care. Are you with us?”

You briefly touched on the investigation into Rep. Gaetz for possible sex trafficking of a minor. How do you see that factoring in for voters? 

Most of them don’t care, unfortunately, until he’s actually charged with something. And even then he’ll still claim to be a victim of persecution, which is very ironic considering his privileged lifestyle. 

I sent my own grandfather to prison for sex trafficking in the Philippines before I was famous, before COVID. So I take that extremely personally. 

It’s part of a larger discussion we need to have because this has been dubbed the “” along I-10 in Pensacola. We have a reputation for that, which is not something you want a reputation for. The fact that our congressperson is implicated in those practices, it’s incredibly difficult to get anything to move on that front. I’m much more concerned about the people who are being trafficked than I am whether or not Matt Gaetz — a rich, powerful, white man — ever goes down for it.

That detail about your grandfather, is that something you’re able to say any more about?

There was actually a about how we helped stop an operation where he and others were using this English-speaking middle school in the Philippines to traffic young girls. My family had reason to suspect that’s what he was doing but no one told me. And as soon as I found out, I made sure that I found somebody to hold him accountable. 

I contacted the , the FBI, the DOJ, the CIA. I didn’t even know who I was supposed to contact, but I contacted all of them. I know how difficult now that process is to actually hold somebody accountable and how long it takes to investigate. He wasn’t arrested for another eight months after initially being reported. 

They shut down the whole operation that they had going over there and he this year because of it. He had Type 1 diabetes and I imagine that prison in the Philippines was very hard on him. And I hope that it was and I hope that he suffered.

Wow. So the Gaetz investigation hits close to home.

I guess I’ve always been a whistleblower. 

It’s never made sense to me to have knowledge that something horrible is happening and not try and do something about it. 

I also wanted to talk about the legal troubles for you, too. The pending felony charges for illegally accessing state computer systems and sending an unauthorized mass text. And also the earlier misdemeanor charges for cyberstalking an ex-boyfriend. How are those allegations playing into the campaign and what do you say in response?

I’ve always been open about my abuse. I don’t think any woman should have to face charges of cyber harassment for naming their abuser on a website for domestic abuse survivors. There’s a reason why that case went nowhere. It’s six years old and hasn’t happened because they’re not going to put up an abuse victim on a stand next to that guy. I actually think it’s a great talking point to discuss how it is that a man can claim that naming him as an abuser is a crime. But when I reported him for sexually assaulting me, it was a he said, she said. (Several say the ex-boyfriend was also a student of Jones’s at the time, though she denies this claim and said his roommate took her class. The relationship led to her 2017 dismissal as a Florida State University instructor. The ex-boyfriend was granted a domestic injunction against her.)

And then the pending allegations about the Florida Department of Health messages?

The state offered to dismiss everything in June. That was two months ago, two and a half. So we’re still waiting on all that to be processed. 

The terms were that I had to pay a $100 fee, not get arrested in the next year and say that I shared responsibility in having that message sent. While I did not send it, I certainly can’t deny that I’ve told people publicly to speak out. So I was like, “Sure, I’ll say I share responsibility.” (The proposed agreement includes a stipulation that Jones did send an unauthorized email.)

I’m not intimidated by them. I’m not going to be threatened or bribed or coerced. I’m unafraid to just name every bad person and exactly what they’ve done, which has gotten me in a lot of trouble. But you know, that’s life.

Before the pandemic, states were serving 44% of 4-year-olds. Now they might not reach 40% over the next 10 years, the report found. 

“The pandemic erased an entire decade of progress in preschool enrollment,” said Steven Barnett, senior co-director of the National Institute for Early Education Research, which released the report. He added that it was “minority children and children from low-income families who lost out most.” 

As in past years, this year’s pre-K report provides an overview of how many children states serve, how much they spend per child and the quality features of programs that support children’s learning and development.

But this 19th edition also conveys the extent of the pandemic’s blow to states’ pre-K systems. Concerns about COVID and reluctance to participate in a virtual program topped the reasons thousands of parents decided to skip pre-K.

“It’s unacceptable to go back to where we were in March 2020,” said Education Secretary Miguel Cardona. “Our littlest learners need more.”

Cardona and Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra joined the Institute’s Monday call with reporters, signaling the Biden administration’s push for a larger federal role in public pre-K.

‘First order of business‘

Becerra highlighted passage of the Democrats’ American Rescue Plan, which many states have used to offset state budget cuts, pay pre-K teachers and keep programs open in spite of enrollment loss. Without federal relief, spending cuts to pre-K would have been much worse, the report said. 

But Biden began his administration with a pledge to do much more — provide universal pre-K for all 3- and 4-year-olds. When last year’s annual report was released, early education advocates were still hopeful Democrats in Congress would pass Build Back Better, a domestic spending package that included $400 billion for child care and pre-K. 

Momentum stalled, and the war in Ukraine and inflation have pushed some of the president’s education priorities aside. The Senate education committee recently held to draw attention to families’ struggles to find quality, affordable programs for young children, but a divided Congress is unlikely to address the issues soon.

Republican leaders don’t agree with Biden’s plan to address those challenges. Their would expand the existing federal block grant for child care. Democrats are still pushing to pass without Republicans’ support.

Barnett said he hopes early-childhood legislation is the Senate’s “first order of business” this week, and added in the media call that the House plan, which passed in November “could find widespread support in Congress.”

Last Thursday, Biden returned to the topic at a Democratic fundraiser in Seattle, citing research findings on high-quality pre-K and the benefits of young children attending school — “not daycare.” 

Overall, state funding declined for pre-K for the first time since 2014, by 3% — almost $255 million, adjusted for inflation. Twenty-six states cut state funding by at least 2%, including those with long-running universal pre-K programs, like Florida, Georgia and Oklahoma. 

Arkansas, however, was among the 14 states that increased spending by at least 2%. The state kept its Arkansas Better Chance classrooms open the whole year. Individual classrooms only closed if there was a COVID outbreak.

“We continued to push through,” said Lori Bridges, director of early childhood programs for the Arkansas Department of Education. While enrollment fell by about 2,800 children at the beginning of the year, parents gradually became more comfortable with safety procedures, Bridges said, and by the end of the year, 87% of the slots were filled. 

The report includes Arkansas among the 10 states “within striking distance” of serving at least 70% of their low-income 4-year-olds. The state, which targets its program to children in poverty, served over 10,400 4-year-olds last year, and would need to enroll about 8,600 more to reach 70%.

Federal funding for universal pre-K, Bridges said, would allow the state to offer free pre-K to middle class families, but she added that with limited staffing and classroom space, her state currently couldn’t implement such an expansion even if it had the funds to do it. “There would have to be some kind of phase-in,” she said.

The plan, released Tuesday, outlines recommendations for a program that will give Colorado families access to 10 hours of preschool per week the year before a child enters kindergarten.

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“I ran on a bold vision for universal preschool that will save Coloradans money and ensure we build a world-class care and education system that our children deserve,” Gov. Jared Polis said in a statement. “I am very proud of the progress toward delivering universal preschool to every family in Colorado.”

The program will be overseen by the . It will be funded through an increase on the tax for nicotine products that .

“Bringing in universal preschool is such an expansion of the good work that has gone on in Colorado for more than 30 years. With a new funding source, it’s an opportunity to take it statewide and really make it possible for all kids to have it. It’s really wonderful,” said Susan Steele, the president and CEO of the Buell Foundation who serves as a co-chair for the Early Childhood Leadership Commission.

The DEC is tasked with strengthening the state’s early childhood services, and voluntary universal preschool is one piece in a system to support young children.

“This is part and parcel of that, with the overarching goal of implementing universal preschool within the context of aligning and advancing the entire early childhood sector so that it is a more seamless, better experience for our families, our children and our providers,” state Rep. Emily Sirota said of the draft plan. The Denver Democrat sponsored the legislation that established DEC.

Research shows that children who attend a high-quality preschool often achieve higher levels of educational attainment and are less likely to experience poverty or commit crime. The state’s investment is not only an effort to break the cycle of poverty but also an opportunity to “immediately (create) an accessible and streamlined system that alleviates the burdens of families and children,” the draft plan reads. 

Local leaders will be in charge

Under the draft plan, DEC would select local leads around the state to implement much of the preschool program. Funding would flow from the department to that local lead, which would likely be a public agency or nonprofit based in Colorado. 

They would be in charge of pursuing partnerships, trying to align programs in their area and ensuring that a “clear vision for early childhood is executed in their area of the state,” according to the plan text — basically all the on-the-ground work for the universal preschool program.

Meanwhile, the DEC would provide resources and make sure the early childhood vision is successfully implemented across the state by creating a comprehensive rules package and providing support to local leads.

“It’s a recognition of the expertise of the folks in those communities, of the leadership that’s there, of a need for local champions who can make connections for families and know the resources that exist,” said Melissa Mares, an early childhood policy fellow at the Colorado Children’s Campaign who served on the Transition Advisory Group. 

Specifically, local leads will be in charge of components like recruiting families, making sure the program is available in both public schools and private community organizations, growing the capacity of providers and allocating funding in a way that ensures at-risk children receive more services. 

“We know that oftentimes that this is the family’s first experience with an educational system … it’s about so much more than the kid. It’s about how the family is doing. Do they have a place to sleep at night? Do they have access to food? We trust local experts who can make those connections and support families as best they can,” Mares said.

There are some Colorado communities that may have multiple strong candidates for a local lead, however, while others might not have any. The draft plan calls for the state to serve as a local lead for those latter communities at first, while simultaneously recruiting and building the capacity of a local partner to take over. 

Influx of federal money possible

The draft plan outlines some challenges for the universal preschool vision: those local capacity limits, a lack of alignment between funding and regulations, and a workforce shortage.

There was a 6.8% decline of active early childhood professionals from 2020 to 2021, according to the Colorado Department of Education. The draft plan recognizes that without an adequate workforce, universal preschool is unlikely to be successful. 

It calls for a review of the credential process to possibly minimize the barriers to people entering the early childhood education workforce. That could include incentives to recruit people like high school students, parents and people from other countries. Additionally, it outlines a goal for DEC to encourage a livable wage and benefits for those workers. 

“Making sure that people are able to enter into this profession and turn it into a career is something that is going to be really essential,” Mares said. 

DEC still needs to determine a base per-child rate for the universal preschool program. In that process, the draft plan recommends that current Colorado Preschool Program funding is integrated and additional funding adjustments are made for underserved populations, regional differences and the potential for half-day or full-day spots. The Proposition EE money will provide a consistent and reliable funding stream, but there’s also the possibility of additional money if President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better bill passes. 

“If that were to happen, that would drastically change the picture of funding,” Sirota said. “We’d be working with beyond EE dollars to implement universal preschool, but with a massive influx of federal dollars as well.”

The draft plan also makes recommendations for delivery of special education programming, including additional funding for children with disabilities in the base rate and collaboration between DEC and the Colorado Department of Education for inclusive programming.

“I’m sure there’s room and space for evolution here, but I think we’re on the right path,” Sirota said. 

There will be a for the plan and members of the public can until Dec. 15.  It will then go to the governor and ECLC for approval.

This story was originally published by Colorado Newsline on . is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Colorado Newsline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Quentin Young for questions: info@coloradonewsline.com. Follow Colorado Newsline on and .

The House passed President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better plan Friday morning by a 220 to 213 vote. One Democrat, Jared Golden of Maine, voted against it.

The $1.75 trillion package — which Democrats say creates a vital social safety net for American families but Republicans call a reckless spending spree during a period of inflation — now heads to the Senate, where its future remains uncertain. The legislation would fund universal pre-K, child care and K-12 educator preparation programs over a 10-year period.

“The impact of this proposal on educational equity, excellence and opportunity — from cradle to college and career — will be nothing short of transformative,” U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said in a statement.

On Thursday, the Congressional Budget Office released its  of the bill, showing the programs would increase the deficit by $367 billion over the 10-year period, a figure that doesn’t include additional revenue from tax enforcement. 

The House is expected to vote next week on President Joe Biden’s $1.75 trillion social spending plan, but its future in the Senate remains uncertain with some progressives wanting to add more programs to the package and two budget-minded Democrats likely to oppose those efforts.

For now, however, Democrats are celebrating the passage of half of Biden’s legislative agenda — the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill that includes funds to expand broadband access, replace diesel school buses and rid schools of lead pipes.

Some of those efforts are well-timed. Just last week, a released from the National Association of State Boards of Education showed that while 45 states have voluntary or mandatory lead testing programs for schools, only 15 provide any financial support for mitigation.

“The influx of money would help bolster state and local efforts for lead testing in schools and provide more opportunities for states to engage in the work,” said Renee Rybak Lang, spokeswoman for the association.

States, she said, will need “clear guidance” on how schools and districts can apply for the funds — $15 billion for replacing lead pipes and $23.5 billion for water treatment projects, fixing pipes and other work to provide clean drinking water.

Families and educators, however, have been more invested in whether the social spending plan — which includes funds for universal pre-K, child care, tax credits and educator preparation programs — makes it to Biden’s desk. For three months, progressive Democrats in the House delayed a vote on the infrastructure bill, arguing they wanted to pass both parts of Biden’s agenda at the same time. But it didn’t work out that way. While they passed the infrastructure bill Friday night, and Biden said he will , the House was only able to pass a rule setting up a future vote for the so-called “Build Back Better” plan. Moderates aren’t ready to sign off on it until they can ensure cost estimates from the Congressional Budget Office square with what the president has told them about its impact on the deficit.

To advance the bill, Democrats are using a process known as reconciliation, which requires only a simple majority to pass. But some observers suggest it could be well into the holiday season before a vote is scheduled in the Senate. And if changes are made, it would have to go back to the House for approval.

“I do have faith that when we get it out of the House, it will pass in the Senate,” said Julie Kashen, a senior fellow at The Century Foundation, a left-leaning think tank. “What’s driving me right now is a lot of hope and the knowledge that there are tons of constituents in West Virginia and Arizona who will benefit from what’s in there.”

Those are the home states of Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, the two fiscally conservative Democrats who drove the cost of the package down from its original $3.5 trillion price tag. 

To reach that deal, the White House agreed to extend a higher child tax credit for one year instead of four, eliminated the president’s plan for free community college and took out over $80 billion for school construction. Nonetheless, Manchin, of West Virginia, has said he still for the $1.75 trillion plan, regardless of what the Congressional Budget Office concludes.

‘Not the first time’

Losing funds for building and renovating schools has been the biggest disappointment for K-12 leaders, who say it’s not just lead pipes but also mold, asbestos, leaky roofs, and inadequate heating and air-conditioning systems that threaten the health and safety of students. 

“Members of Congress cannot keep punting on funding the second largest infrastructure sector in the country and claim they want global competitiveness, high-quality educators and equitable academic outcomes for students of color,” AASA, the School Superintendents Association, said in a strongly worded statement when the $1.75 trillion agreement was announced. 

The association is asking the U.S. Department of Education to give districts more time to spend relief funds from the American Rescue Plan, which provided $122 billion for K-12, on facility needs. According to the organization’s September , a quarter of respondents said the 2024 deadline to spend the money is an obstacle because contractors are hesitant to work under that timeline as long as supply chain disruption is driving up costs and making it hard to get materials.

A spokesman for AASA said the organization has not received a response. But in a statement, the department emphasized the American Rescue Plan’s “historic and unprecedented investment in education” and said it would “continue to work with state and local education communities” to provide support, but did not say whether it would extend the deadline.

Nation ‘not partisan’ on pre-K 

While public schools won’t see more federal funds for construction anytime soon, states would potentially have up to $50 billion over the next three years for in the child care sector — including expanding and renovating facilities. Child care centers are among the settings that would accommodate new universal pre-K classrooms.

The combined $400 billion for child care and pre-K in the social spending bill would lower or eliminate the cost of care and preschool for many families. But experts say it’s still hard to predict if states that have never offered public pre-K — such as Idaho, New Hampshire, South Dakota and Wyoming — would participate.

“They don’t think they need it,” Steve Barnett, senior co-director of the National Institute for Early Education Research, said about those states. While the bill would allow locally funded programs to participate, Barnett added that governors would “have to decide whether they would rather be in control or turn it down and have localities go their own way.”

When pressed recently on whether he supports universal pre-K, Wyoming Republican said he thinks Biden’s policies aren’t helping people. 

But Kashen of the Century Foundation noted that many Republican governors were early supporters of state-funded pre-K. While the bill in Washington is partisan, she said, “the nation is not partisan on this issue.”

Over the next year, they visited dairy farms, brushed Highland cattle’s long hair, and branched off to learn about elk, deer and llamas. They read stories about cows, counted cows and compared different breeds. That’s the kind of child-led learning experience that Nelson plans to continue this fall when she participates for the first time in Vermont’s Universal Prekindergarten program.

“We base our curriculum on children’s interests,” said Nelson, who has 26 years of experience in the field and even has former students who enroll their own children in her program. “We know the kids’ learning style. We have a history with them.”

Allowing providers such as Nelson to participate in a publicly funded pre-K system could speed up the timeline for providing universal access to 3- and 4-year-olds — along with tuition-free community college, the other half of President Joe Biden’s plan to provide four more years of free public education. But from the National Institute for Early Education Research and Home Grown, an organization working to improve home-based child care, suggests it’s not that simple. Including family child care in pre-K initiatives could satisfy parents who prefer their home-like environment and increase the supply of preschool programs in communities with limited supply, the authors say. However, they caution policymakers against expecting in-home providers to immediately meet the same standards and regulations as pre-K centers.

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As Congress begins writing a $3.5 trillion plan that is expected to include $200 billion for early-childhood education, the report recommends lawmakers take a gradual approach that considers the perspectives of providers and parents.

“It’s really tricky for home-based providers. They lose out when they don’t get included [in public pre-K programs],” said Natalie Renew, Home Grown’s director. But pre-K systems that are primarily oriented toward schools and centers also disadvantage the providers and the families they serve, she added.

The primary downside, she said, is that if more home-based providers seek state funds to serve just preschoolers that could mean less space for infants and toddlers, space that is already in . Working parents are more likely to choose family child care over centers for , surveys show.

According to of Biden’s American Families Plan, families would be able to “choose the settings that work best for them.”

‘People coming into your home’

Parents family child care because it offers a more personalized environment, allows them to keep siblings in the same program and can offer flexible hours that centers can’t accommodate. Including home-based providers in state pre-K also could further diversify the workforce, allowing parents to find caregivers that reflect their culture and speak their language.

Family child care providers have to to be licensed, but many state pre-K regulations regarding facility space, hours of instruction and education requirements for teachers don’t easily translate to someone who cares for children in their living room. State funding could be a predictable source of income for providers, but it also means “more people coming into your home” to monitor compliance, Renew said.

New Jersey, for one, requires pre-K classrooms to be 950 square feet. “Would homes need dedicated spaces for the pre-K program with minimum square footage per child equivalent to the classroom requirement?” the authors ask.

States often require lead pre-K teachers to have a two- or four-year degree and special training in child development. Currently almost 50 percent of home-based providers have no college education, according to the report.

Educational requirements could increase the quality of family child care, but Renew said there’s a mismatch between most college-level early-childhood programs and the realities of family child care — especially around implementing a pre-K curriculum for 3- and 4-year-olds while still attending to the needs of babies and toddlers.

“It doesn’t work if we turn every family child care provider into a teeny tiny center,” she said.

Lanette Dumas, executive director of the National Association for Family Child Care, said she’s encouraged by the direction the administration is taking, but wants funding for an “on-ramp” to help providers earn degrees and make other modifications to their programs.

Finally, Renew added, there’s a false assumption that home-based child care is cheaper. The report argues that including such providers on a large scale could end up costing more.

In the Seattle Preschool Program, for example, a coach or consultant visiting a center would provide training for two to four teachers at once and “indirectly impact up to 40 kids,” said Monica Liang-Aguirre, who leads the program at the Seattle Department of Education and Early Learning. With family child care, that same coach might be working with one provider who serves maybe two or three children. The coach is still receiving the same pay and likely has added travel expenses to reach at-home providers.

Renew said there’s not yet enough research on whether children benefit from home-based pre-K programs in the same way they do in centers.

San Francisco has the most experience, with at-home providers representing 18 percent of the city’s pre-K sites. In ���𲹳ٳٱ���’s program, funded by a local , 25 at-home providers — about 2 percent of the overall number — are expected to participate this fall.

Liang-Aguirre said the department waived the bachelor’s degree requirement because it wasn’t realistic for home-based providers. The majority are immigrants and speak languages other than English.

They serve families that are often reluctant to use out-of-home care and are “trying to figure out if it’s a good idea to let their children go to preschool,” Liang-Aguirre said. “We see it as a really important model and an important way to make preschool accessible for all families.”