01/04/05 -- Florida lawmakers passed a bill Dec. 16 to create a statewide voluntary, free prekindergarten program for 4-year-olds. Gov. Jeb Bush said he will sign it.
Florida now joins Georgia and Oklahoma as the only states with universal prekindergarten.
Florida’s program implements a constitutional amendment approved by voters in 2002. It allows the prekindergarten services to be delivered by public or private providers.
Parents will be given two choices. One option is a year-round program requiring 540 hours of instruction -- an average of three hours a day in a 180-day school year.
Class size is capped at 18 students, but any class with more than 10 students must have a second instructor. Teachers of these classes must have an associate degree in child development.
The other option is a more intense 300-hour program held during the summer before children enter kindergarten. These classes would be capped at 10 students, and the teacher must be state certified and hold a bachelor’s degree.
An estimated 130,000 to 150,000 new students are expected to enroll in the program in August.
The program is seen as a good first start, but many concerns have been raised. The bill’s sponsors call the measure “a work in progress” and vow to improve it.
The program is estimated to cost $400 million a year, and the per-student cost is expected to be $2,000 to $3,000. But the actual cost will not be determined until the regular spring legislative session.
“The big fight will come during the regular legislative session over how many dollars are allocated to each child in prekindergarten,” Wayne Blanton, executive director of the Florida School Boards Association, told the Tallahassee Democrat. If it’s not enough, many private providers won’t want to participate, he says, “and that will dump it in the lap of public schools.”
Another concern is that while the bill bans discrimination based on race or national origin, private providers can turn away students they don’t want. The plan relies heavily on private schools because there aren’t enough public school classrooms available.
School leaders also question the “universal” aspect of the plan, especially the stipulation that school districts must comply with the class-size reduction law before they can receive any preK funding.
That will present a problem for many growing urban school districts already struggling with overcrowded schools.
In addition, the law doesn’t require prekindergarten providers to offer high-quality, age-appropriate curricula or curricula designed to meet the needs of English language learners or students with disabilities.
The bill calls for the state education department to review what it considers to be good preK curricula, but providers may choose the curricula they use.
Concerns also have been raised about the provision in the law that lets religious groups offer preK programs. That is likely to be the basis of a court challenge against the program.
Two Florida state courts already have ruled that using taxpayer money to send students to private, religious schools is unconstitutional, says Marc Egan, director of NSBA’s Voucher Strategy Center. “I wonder what happens to this program if the Supreme Court does uphold the lower court rulings on the original voucher program.”
Egan also raises the issue about the potential for inadequate oversight. “Given the problems of fraud and scandal that have plagued Florida’s existing voucher programs, one has to question whether the state legislature has learned its lesson and built in requirements for public reporting and oversight to prevent more problems with this new program.”