In N.C., On the Verge of Big Cuts to Pre-K

North Carolina is on the verge of major cuts in the state’s Fiscal Year 2012 budget, including cuts to state-funded preschool, education, and other early childhood-related programs. The budget was ratified by the house then vetoed by Gov. Bev Purdue on Sunday but it’s likely that the state’s General Assembly will override that veto.

More at Four, North Carolina’s preschool program that targets kids from low-income families, would be cut by $32 million, or approximately 20 percent. The program would also be transferred out of the state Department of Education into Health and Human Services, a move that budget cutters say would save administrative costs, and parents enrolling children in More at Four would be expected to pay a 8 to 10 percent co-pay for services.

“The General Assembly may be satisfied with a state in reverse, but I am not,” Gov. Purdue said in her veto message. Her words might be falling on deaf ears: 5 Democrats are currently voting with the Assembly’s Republicans on the budget, providing the power to override the governor’s veto.

The budget would cut almost 9 percent from state preK-12 education spending overall, and 20 percent from Smart Start, an early care and education initiative that focuses on improving the quality of child care in the subsidy system and provides services related to children’s health and family engagement.

John Pruette, Executive Director of the North Carolina Office of School Readiness, expressed two major concerns on the cuts to More at Four: that the proposed co-pay would discourage low-income families from enrolling children, and that the changes could erode quality in the program.

“We have a priority of service requirement that targets children who have never been served in an early care situation,” Pruette explained to Early Ed Watch. “We’re trying to find those kids who have lived outside the subsidy system.”

Pruette said that this year, 55 percent of the children in the program had never been served in any kind of setting prior to their pre-k year, and that requirements for payment or income eligibility regulations may have been a barrier.

“We believe that there’s a reason they lived outside the pre-k program and that this co-pay will keep us from serving the population that it was meant to serve,” he said.

Pruette continued: “The quality standards that are in place, specifically the requirement for a teacher to hold a bachelor’s degree, the class size [guidelines], the implementation of research-based curriculum, the low adult-to-child ratios that we have—I think you could argue, and I do argue, are in jeopardy on this particular plan.”

Language in the budget indicates that the state child care commission may need to adopt new quality standards over time. Many advocates of More at Four take this language to mean that after the funding cuts, programs will not to be able to maintain the quality standards they had in the past. More at Four currently meets all 10 of the National Institute for Early Education Research’s Quality Standards Benchmarks.

The General Assembly is expected to vote on the vetoed budget as early as tomorrow.