{"id":506306,"date":"2018-01-21T00:01:17","date_gmt":"2018-01-21T07:01:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=506306"},"modified":"2018-01-21T00:09:31","modified_gmt":"2018-01-21T07:09:31","slug":"pre-k-solutions-how-other-states-did-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2018\/01\/pre-k-solutions-how-other-states-did-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Pre-K solutions: How other states did it"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As other states and communities across the country expand preschool programs, they have run into a familiar stumbling block: How does a state expand education to younger children without losing federal Head Start dollars or hurting the business model of private child care providers?<\/p>\n<p>Oregon, Georgia and Washington, D.C. all have found a way to combine state and federal funding into the same classrooms. Ditto for Oklahoma.<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s how two states addressed the issues:<\/p>\n<h3>Oklahoma<\/h3>\n<p>Highly conservative, Republican-controlled Oklahoma &#8212; an oil and gas state with entrenched poverty akin to New Mexico\u2019s &#8212; offers preschool to all 4-year-olds and an expanding group of 3-year-olds.<\/p>\n<p>Three-quarters of Oklahoma\u2019s 4-year-olds attend preschool, according to the state Department of Education. Oklahoma pays for 4-year-old pre-K through general education revenues.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"module align-left half type-aside\">\n<h3>About this article<\/h3>\n<p>This article is part of <a href=\"http:\/\/searchlightnm.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Searchlight New Mexico&#8217;s<\/a> year-long journalistic investigation into child well-being in New Mexico. Read the series, Raising New Mexico, <a href=\"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/series\/raising-new-mexico\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/aside>\n<p>\u201cWhat we did was put a provision in the bill that said the school districts didn\u2019t have to operate the pre-K themselves,\u201d says Steven Dow, executive director of CAP Tulsa, a nonprofit provider of early childhood education in Oklahoma.<\/p>\n<p>That meant school districts could contract with Head Start, nonprofit or private child care providers to run their state preschool programs.<\/p>\n<p>In New Mexico, nonprofits can apply to provide Head Start programs as well as pre-K funded by the Children, Youth and Families Department &#8212; but the enterprises are separate, not combined.<\/p>\n<p>A Thornburg Foundation study on early childhood programs in New Mexico recommends blending Head Start and state pre-K dollars into the same classroom.<\/p>\n<p>That \u201cwould allow providers to use the same classroom for Head Start but provide extended services with pre-K dollars for working families,\u201d according to the study.<\/p>\n<h3>Georgia<\/h3>\n<p>As the first state in the nation to establish a \u201cpreschool for all\u201d program, Georgia was also one of the first to confront the issue of state-federal competition, according to the Thornburg study.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>State lottery revenues pay for Georgia\u2019s pre-K program in settings including public schools, private child care centers, faith-based organizations, Head Start agencies, state colleges and universities and military facilities, according to the National Institute for Early Education Research.<\/p>\n<p>In the mid-\u201990s, Georgia created a special office tasked with improving collaboration between state pre-K providers and Head Start. A decade later, it combined all its early childhood programs under a single umbrella, the Department of Early Care and Learning.<\/p>\n<p>NIEER ranks Georgia among the top 10 states for pre-K access for 4-year-olds.<\/p>\n<h3>In New Mexico<\/h3>\n<p>New Mexico lawmakers have debated whether to create a single agency dedicated to early childhood education. Currently, the pre-K system is divided between the Public Education Department and CYFD.<\/p>\n<p>Early on, the Martinez administration eliminated the pre-K \u201cczar\u201d who was tasked with ensuring collaboration between those two departments. Meanwhile, the \u201cHead Start Collaboration Director\u201d position within CYFD went empty for three years before being filled in 2017.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI really believe it\u2019s important to have someone in the governor\u2019s office thinking about coordination among the agencies especially around children and young people,\u201d said Claire Dudley Chavez, executive vice president for policy and stakeholder engagement with United Way of Santa Fe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Oregon, Georgia and Washington, D.C. all have found a way to combine state and federal funding into the same classrooms. Ditto for Oklahoma.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[234,125,107],"class_list":["post-506306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-children","tag-education","tag-roundhouse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=506306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506306\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=506306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=506306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=506306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}