NSBA's Pre-K Committee Welcome Call Notes
Pre-K Committee Welcome Call
October 9, 11 & 12, 2007
Minutes
I. Welcome and Background
Thank you very much for joining us on today’s call. As you know, today is the first of two calls that are meant to welcome members to the Pre-K Legislative Committee and to update you on our future plans. So welcome!!
It is great to have you as a part of this new initiative. We are really looking forward to your contributions and the work of the committee. Some of you have been asking us how many people have joined the committee. At this time, we have had a few hundred individuals express interest in participating. The response was greater than expected, and we are excited to have so many that will be working together to make a significant impact on the pre-k agenda at the federal level.
We have representation from every region in the country on the committee and from both rural and urban areas, which is important for our influence on Capitol Hill.
First, I would like to introduce the Pre-K Legislative Team here at NSBA that will be working with the committee. They include:
Kathleen Branch, who oversees our grassroots program,
Melissa Harden, also in the grassroots area,
Katherine Shek, our legislative analyst, and
Myself, Chrisanne Gayl, a lobbyist on staff.
To start us off, I’d like to give you a brief background on how this committee emerged. As many of you have probably noted in your states and in listening to educators as well as others in the field, the issue of pre-kindergarten education has been gaining momentum in recent years. This is particularly true as more people come to understand the real benefit and impact that it can make on children’s school readiness and their achievement and success in later years.
Some of the most compelling information and data are included in a publication that the Center for Public Education published entitled Many Happy Returns, which if you haven’t read already, I encourage you to do so. It can be found on the pre-k committee website, www.nsba.org/prekcommittee.
NSBA began thinking more seriously about this issue a few years ago after surveying our membership on their interests and views about education. What we found was that there was a real thirst for information on early childhood education and a significant interest in how school board members could play a role in encouraging and improving pre-k programs in their communities.
As a result, NSBA began to broaden its focus beyond K-12 to include a preschool component. In the last few years, we have paid significantly more attention to this issue. For example:
- The Center for Public Education has designated this topic as one of its key issue areas for disseminating research and information.
- The Advocacy Department devoted more time to this subject and drafted a policy research brief on what the federal involvement should be in this area. I encourage you to read this, if you have not already done so since it lays out NSBA’s thinking on the ways the federal government can help to encourage an expansion of high-quality pre-k in states and local communities. This brief can be found on the pre-k website.
- Additionally, thanks to funding from the Pew Charitable Trust, we are partnering with a handful of state associations on implementing strategies to grow pre-k in their states. Right now we are working in Kansas, Texas, and Ohio.
- And last year, our Delegate Assembly, which many of you know is the policy governing body of NSBA, approved a resolution urging Congress to “expand access to and funding for high-quality, voluntary pre-kindergarten programs for all three and four year-olds.”
This last point is essentially the mission of this committee. We are issue-specific. We are designed to make a Congressional impact. Our primary goal is to advance legislation that will increase the federal investment in high-quality, voluntary pre-k programs for all three and four year-olds.
The pre-k team thanks you for your commitment to this cause and looks forward to working together with you to make this happen.
II. Member Responsibilities
As we embark on our work together, I would like to outline the responsibilities of committee membership and what you can expect from the Pre-k Team.
- First, we ask that you respond to our specific Calls to Action to contact your members of Congress when there are important votes in Congress. These may be few and far between, because the issue of pre-k does not come up very often on the Congressional agenda, but when it does, we need to be ready to email, call, fax, and meet with members of Congress in order for our voices to be heard.
The pre-k team will notify you when something important is happening on Capitol Hill. We will also give you background information and talking points to use in your conversations with members. However, we recognize that many of you are experts in your own right on these issues, and we encourage you to speak from your own experiences.
As part of this task, we ask that you always follow up with the pre-K team regarding any response that you receive from your Members of Congress or their staff. This is helpful information for us to have so that we can build upon the work that you have done.
- Second, we ask you to provide us with specific information about your school district (such as data and stories) that will help in NSBA’s lobbying efforts with members of Congress about the need for federal investment in pre-k. We will be asking you for some of this information in an upcoming survey that we will be sending out, as well as in future questionnaires that we will periodically send to you.
- Third, we ask you to share the information that we send you—whether it be calls to action, reports, or research—with other members of your community. You are the leaders in your local communities and by joining this committee you have signaled that you are passionate about early childhood education. We ask that you share this passion with other school board members, educators, and the press to generate interest in federal action on pre-k. This type of energy often bubbles up to those in Washington for them to take notice.
- Finally, we ask that you provide feedback to us when asked about specific federal legislative proposals and/or recommendations. In the world of federal legislation, there are often numerous opportunities for input or change. NSBA anticipates polling the committee about some of these in the course of working together so that we are able to affect the best legislative outcome.
Lastly, I’d just like to say that your committee membership will really be what you make of it. The Pre-k Team is here to provide you with the resources, tools, and opportunity to maximize your influence over Congress, but your participation will determine how effective we really are.
Now, I will turn the conversation over to my colleague Kathleen, we will provide more information on how we plan on communicating with you to keep you informed on the issue and up-to-date about what is happening in here in Washington, DC.
III. Plan for Communications
The Pre-K committee will primarily communicate using e-mail, the Pre-k website and conference calls. You should be hearing from us every 2-3 weeks and more frequently, should federal pre-k issues arise.
Currently, we are looking at ways for members to communicate with one another and hope to have available to members by the end of the month.
Conference calls, like this one, will take place on a quarterly basis. Our goal is to add the webinar as a component to conference calls in the future. A webinar would enable you to call in like a conference call, but you also have the option to use your computer to type in your questions online or to view powerpoints.
You will also receive a monthly newsletter from the Center for Public Education, the Pre-K Primer. There are also some great Pre-K resources, including information from The Center for Public Education, on our Pre-K committee website at: www.nsba.org/prekcommittee
Now, Katherine Shek will share with you the Pre-K legislative update.
IV. Legislative Update
This is an exciting session of congress for pre-k. There are 3 major pre-k bills that could be viable vehicles for future actions to increase the federal investment in pre-k. I will give you a brief update on each of these.
The first is “Pre-K Act” (H.R. 3289) introduced by Rep. Mazie Hirono, a democrat from Hawaii on 8/1/07. This bill has the backing of education committee chair Rep. George Miller, D-CA, and will probably be offered as an amendment to NCLB during reauthorization. The bill would provide grants to states that already have state funded pre-k programs that meet certain criteria. This bill aims to build capacities to help states improve the quality of their state pre-k programs through extended school day or improving teacher quality, etc.
The other two bills also would provide grants to eligible states to develop new pre-k programs or improve the quality of existing programs.
The first bill introduced by Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY and Sen. Christopher Bond, R-MO (S. 1823 “Ready to Learn Act “ on 7/19/07) would award grants to eligible states to fund full-day voluntary pre-k programs. States will then make sub-grants to preschool providers such as schools, Head Start programs and community based programs. To be eligible, states must maintain or increase the amount of pre-k expenditures each year.
The other bill, introduced by Sen. Bob Casey, D-PA (S.1374), along with a companion bill in the House introduced by Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-NY (H.R. 2859), is similar to the Clinton/Bond bill. A difference between the two is that the Casey/Maloney bill would be administered through the Department of Health and Human Services; whereas the Clinton/Bond bill would be administered through the Department of Education. The Casey bill also contains more specific requirements.
Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-CA also introduced a pre-k bill early on in the session (S.152). Her bill is similar to the Casey/Maloney bill, but is less comprehensive.
V. Future Activities
As you can see, after many years of relative quiet on this issue in Congress, we now have a number of proposals that have been introduced with a very real possibility of federal action. So we will need to get up and running quickly.
I would like to share with you a few of the upcoming activities that we foresee for the committee in the near future.
1.) In the next few weeks, we will be emailing you a survey to learn more about your specific pre-k interests and expertise, as well as to gather some important information about your school district and the programs in which you live. These data will help us to further narrow our focus and may be used in determining to contact you about specific issues. For example, if you live in an urban area, we may target this subset of the committee for your particular feedback on programs in urban settings.
2.) Also, please be on the lookout for a possible Call to Action in the near future. As Katherine mentioned, if George Miller, the Chairman of the House Education committee introduces a bill to reauthorize NCLB, a pre-k amendment is likely to be offered by Ms. Hirono during mark-up of this bill. We will alert you if this happens and ask you to weigh in with your members on the committee.
3.) We will be holding a Webinar in November to share with you the information we have collected from our survey and update you on the latest developments in Congress. We will be sending you more information as we get closer to this date.
VI. Concluding Remarks
For now, that is all that we have to report. We thank you again for agreeing to take part in this committee and look forward to your participation. If you have any questions or comments, about today’s call please feel free to email Melissa at mharden@nsba.org.