When Dreams Come True

There are few things as bracing as the day after a big political victory when the ol’ rubber engages the road. Last week, on the day the backers of Proposition 10 massed at a UCLA preschool to declare victory, Gay MacDonald sat in a plastic chair talking the realpolitik of kids’ issues. Behind a glass window, the big, bearded director Rob Reiner sat in an office, working the phone.

“What would I do if I were in charge of spending the money?” MacDonald, the executive director of the university’s preschool program, smiled a sweet, wicked, schoolteacher-y smile. “What would I do, if I were the queen? Well . . .” And with that, she launched into a detailed discourse that had the ring of one of those daydreams that follow the arrival of junk mail from the Publisher’s Clearinghouse Giveaway, announcing that you may have already won!!

Proposition 10--the ballot measure that would tax cigarettes to the tune of 50 cents a pack to promote early childhood development--was, at the time, squeaking by with a margin of about 57,000 votes. All during the campaign, it had glowed with the aura of one of those nice, enlightened ideas that was so civilized, you couldn’t imagine the average schmo buying into it.

Go figure. The schmoes rose to the occasion, and with Reiner’s announcement that morning of a “victory for the children of California,” the glow hardened into something more interesting and real. The new tax is expected to raise $700 million statewide next year, to be spent county by county at the direction of local commissions. Now comes the hard part: What priorities, what dreams will be funded? Whose babies will lose out? Whose will win?

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Proposition 10 already has set one important priority: Early childhood has a seat at the public policy table now. This is a big deal, considering the mixed feelings that still roil around its corollary issue--working mothers. When women are still half-terrified that their need for a paycheck may end up depriving their babies, it’s touchy to note that the first years of those babies’ lives are critical.

A child’s sense of importance, of being loved, the creation of a secure attachment--few issues in life are as far-reaching as these. All are established, by and large, in early childhood. Nearly 90% of brain growth occurs during a child’s first three years, but only 4% of public spending has focused on children under 3.

Proposition 10 promises to change that equation with filthy lucre. If the new law yields as projected--that is, if these mounting cigarette taxes don’t drive down sales and state revenue--there stands to be a ton of money for infants and toddlers next year.

The estimate for Los Angeles County is $176 million, with Orange and Ventura counties getting $50 million and $12 million, respectively. You can staff a lot of preschools with that kind of moola. Or, if you’re down with the working moms, subsidize a lot of nice, long maternity leaves. Or provide parenting classes and effective mental health care to depressed, overwhelmed parents. Or offer decent baby-sitting for welfare moms being forced to work. Or subsidize preschool teacher salaries to lessen turnover among the caregivers with whom it is so important for toddlers to bond. Or give one parent an incentive to stay home with the kids, if that’s your view.

Or--and here the rubber meets the twisted road of politics--you could do what we do too often when touchy questions meet money: Throw a buck to this constituency, a buck to that one, and bicker until the windfall is gone.

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MacDonald, a mother and an expert in child development, has spent much of her adult life daydreaming about a moment like this. As a student, she says, she once wrote a paper outlining a plan to make elementary schools into one-stop child-care centers that provided everything from the Three Rs to prenatal care and advice.

Her idea--”integrated service”--is one that academics have preached for years, and that is already being tried on some campuses. She also has some less utopian thoughts. Raising preschool teacher salaries, for instance. She’s lost five of her best teachers this year, mostly to the public schools where the money is better, even though her program offers UC benefits, a national name and a 500-child waiting list.

She smiles, imagining the burned rubber to come. “There are going to be a lot of competing demands,” she says, in the understatement of the day. The stakes are clear: This could drive national policy--or sputter. Here’s hoping that the rising to the occasion lasts beyond election day.

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Shawn Hubler’s column appears Mondays and Thursdays. Her e-mail address is shawn.hubler@latimes.com.