House Republicans either don't know or don't care what prekindergarten is for. Their pre-K bill includes virtually no educational standards.
Published March 21, 2004
As it relates to teaching 4-year-olds, Florida House Republicans now have fashioned their own version of "high quality." Their response to a constitutional mandate requiring universal prekindergarten next year is to, in effect, let a teenager supervise the kids for three hours a day.
The pre-K bill that passed out of the House Education K-20 Committee Wednesday mostly along party lines is so devoid of educational standards that it might as well simply ask children to take a nap. Loranne Ausley, a Democratic member of the committee, threw up her hands. "The bottom line," she said, "is this bill has not one iota of quality."
The other bottom line is that the Pre-K amendment was endorsed by Gov. Jeb Bush, and his spokesperson calls it one of his top priorities for the session. So why the public silence as his lieutenant governor's consensus plan for prekindergarten is mocked in the House? Why would his legislative soul mate, Speaker Johnnie Byrd, so thoroughly trash one of the governor's education initiatives?
These are not matters of degree. The House bill offers virtually none of the quality measures that were prescribed by a task forced assembled under Lt. Gov. Toni Jennings. Take your pick. The task force called for teachers with college degrees; the bill has no educational requirements. The task force wanted no more than 10 students per instructional adult; the bill has no ratios. The task force wanted schools to be accredited; the bill doesn't care. The task force wanted six hours a day, just like kindergarten; the bill provides for three. The task force wanted pre-K overseen by the Department of Education; the bill would give the job to the Agency for Workforce Innovation.
As if to underscore the House's ideological contempt for prekindergarten, the bill also offers to hand out government vouchers to parents who teach their 4-year-olds at home.
Jennings, a former Senate president, has played a constructive role in the debate, and the governor's office dispatched someone to the House committee to speak against the bill. But the session is now three weeks old, and neither chamber is offering a bill with the governor's plan. The education commissioner, Jim Horne, is sending weak, if not mixed, signals about whether he wants his agency to oversee pre-K. As for the tab that will come due next year, the governor is making that job all the more difficult as he asks this year for some $480-million in tax reductions for wealthy investors and corporations - money that then wouldn't be available to pay for pre-K.
The pre-K initiative was about giving 4-year-olds a better chance to succeed in school, but some House members either don't understand or don't care. The governor, never shy when it comes to his legislative priorities, ought to be embarrassed by their indifference. The House committee repudiated voters and neglected children. The less the governor has to say, the more his own commitment might be called into question.
