Group Sets Strategy for Preschool

When Jeannine Campbell taught kindergarten, it wasn’t difficult for her to tell which of her students had attended preschool.

The ones who had were “more attentive, they easily separated from their parents and they were much more confident,” said Campbell, now coordinator for the Magnolia School District’s School Readiness Program, which helps prepare children for kindergarten.

“Preschool isn’t just about children,” she said. “It’s about educating their parents that they’re vitally important in their children’s education.”

First 5 California, which distributes money under the Proposition 10 cigarette tax, recently funded a radio campaign to inform parents about the importance of quality preschool programs. Last July, First 5 voted to give $100 million to development of preschool programs.

Attending preschool -- or some form of prekindergarten program such as Head Start -- leads to higher high school graduation rates and a lower occurrence of crime, while better preparing children who enter kindergarten socially and intellectually, said Maryann O’Sullivan, executive director of Preschool California, citing research by education and business groups.

Hoping to create a groundswell of support statewide, the nonprofit Preschool California -- which promotes publicly funded preschools for 4-year-olds -- met recently with educators, businesspeople and community representatives in six cities, including Anaheim.

The meetings are a way to share research and create strategies for developing support for a billion-dollar education initiative that Preschool California said, though costly, is necessary to meet families’ needs.

The Oakland-based organization has the support of such groups as the California Federation of Teachers, the California Police Chiefs Assn., the California State Conference of the NAACP and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

Peter Villegas, a MALDEF board member who was at the Anaheim meeting, said increased access to preschool presents an opportunity to teach children at a young age to “understand and embrace other cultures.”

About 47% of California’s 1.17 million 3- to 5-year-olds were enrolled in some type of program before kindergarten in 2000, according to the California Research Bureau. While 58% of whites were enrolled, that number dropped to 37% for Latinos.

Anaheim’s six-school Magnolia Elementary School District’s student population is more than half English-language learners, and 73% qualify for free or discount lunches. District Supt. Paul Mercier said he wants school readiness programs to be “the culture of our community. We know how important that is.” So many children entering school, Mercier said, not only have the burden of learning content, but English as well.

“English-language learners begin very far behind and they may never catch up,” said panelist Sandra Berry, superintendent of the Anaheim City School District, which has 65% of its pupils in the English-learners category.

Two-thirds of the student population was not enrolled in prekindergarten programs, Berry said. “Children’s brains develop so very early,” she said, adding that early education reduces the likelihood of unemployment and dependence on welfare later in life.

Orange County’s demographics and economics are changing, said Beverly Tidwell, a program administrator at the Children’s Home Society in Santa Ana. When Preschool California descends on Sacramento in August, Tidwell wants legislators to know that “there is a new Orange County, and a lot of families need assistance in services.”

Assemblywoman Lynn Daucher (R-Brea) is co-sponsor of a bill that would make preschool accessible to all parents who want to enroll their children, regardless of income. “The state pours millions into trying to help at-risk students” late in their school careers, she said.

Early education, Daucher said, would be a form of “preventive medicine.”

Georgia, New York and Florida offer some form of state-funded preschooling.

The group admits that the cost is daunting, and that the effort will span several years. The plan calls for building on existing infrastructure and making requirements for teaching preschool the same as those faced by K-12 educators.