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Will pre-K be a private party?

Four months before the doors are to open on Florida's new prekindergarten, Education Commissioner John Winn has invited public schools to the party. If Pinellas County is any indication, not many will attend.

Winn's memo to school districts this week says most of them are eligible to start their own pre-K classes in August. His "interpretation" of whether the districts have sufficient classroom space may well be at odds with what legislators intended, but he is trying to solve a problem they created.

Lawmakers all but left public schools out of the pre-K equation, fashioning a program designed to appeal to day care centers. The reason the state isn't requiring certified teachers is that most centers don't employ them. The reason the state will allow participating private schools to refuse certain children - a practice that is antithetical to public schools - is that religious providers asked for the privilege.

Now Winn is scrambling because too few private schools may participate to meet the expected demand of 150,000 students. His memo to public school districts gave them all of 10 days to decide, and they will have to respond without knowing for sure how much money they would be paid. The House and Senate proposed budgets allocate a miserly $2,500 for each student's schooling.

Pinellas illustrates the dilemma school districts face. The district used to provide school readiness programs for 4-year-olds, but dropped them in 2003 because of declining state reimbursement. Superintendent Clayton Wilcox already has notified the state that Pinellas won't participate in the pre-K program. Why? He cannot responsibly start something new without knowing how he would get the money to build the classrooms. The Legislature didn't provide any.

Voters envisioned something better when in 2002 they approved a "high quality" program, but lawmakers are showing no signs of listening. The skeleton the Legislature built in December - with three-hour instructional days and minimal academic requirements - is still largely hollow.

What makes this legislative indifference all the more disconcerting is that most political leaders urged voters to adopt universal pre-K. Now they are acting as though this were being shoved down their throats.

[Last modified April 15, 2005, 10:18:09]