Preschool for Everyone

Like many young parents, John and Janine Morreale were willing to stretch their finances to get their child, three-year-old Johnny, into preschool. Both worked full time--John in maintenance, Janine as a teacher--but their joint income was not enough to foot the $6,000 bill, equal to the yearly rent of their apartment. "We were living paycheck to paycheck, and we even had to start borrowing from my mother-in-law," recalls Janine. "It just didn't make any sense."

It makes a lot of sense now. In September, Johnny, now four, started pre-kindergarten at Brooklyn's P.S. 200, the local public elementary school--free. He is one of the first beneficiaries of a $62 million New York State program aimed at making preschool, like elementary and high school, part of every child's publicly funded education.

Parental demand for early learning has grown steadily in recent years--as has the cost. Well-off families can usually afford the pricey tuition of private preschool, and the poor are eligible for aid in the form of Head Start, the federally funded preschool program. But middle-class families like the Morreales have traditionally been left out.

That is starting to change. Today 39 states pay for at least one kind of pre-kindergarten program, says a September report by the Families and Work Institute. Though admission usually hinges on financial need, a few states are moving toward universal pre-K, so called because it provides a place for every child whose parents want one. Georgia has funded universal pre-K since 1995. And beginning this fall, New York is funding some 19,000 slots for pre-kindergartners, chosen mainly by lottery; it has pledged universal access by 2003.

Back in 1992, when Georgia Governor Zell Miller first floated the idea of publicly funding pre-K, his plan was roundly derided as state-sponsored baby sitting. Yet today Georgia's $217 million program serves 61,000 kids, and is so popular with parents that some camp out all night to be first to register. Miller now advocates mandatory enrollment. "If I had a choice of pre-K or 12th grade being mandatory," he says, "I'd take pre-K in a second."

Public preschool has been cropping up in stump speeches across the nation. Appearing at a 36-state powwow on pre-K in September, Education Secretary Richard Riley promised increased federal collaboration. Educators, who have long fretted over children showing up for kindergarten ill prepared, are coming around in support. Unlike some private nursery schools, where teachers may have only a high school diploma, most public pre-kindergarten teachers undergo the same rigorous certification as elementary school teachers. "Today we're asking kids to meet higher standards in K through 12," says American Federation of Teachers president Sandra Feldman. "But if we don't prepare them earlier, then they're not going to meet them."