President Barack Obama has placed early childhood education high on his agenda, but the School District of Philadelphia has scaled back on the number of seats that serve students in pre-kindergarten and Head Start programs for a third straight year.

The school district reduced the number of slots available for pre-K and Head Start programs due to cutbacks in federal Title I funding, said Fernando Gallard, chief information officer for Pennsylvania’s largest K-12 school district with an enrollment of 204,000.

Leaders of model day-care providers and a community watchdog organizations say the loss of more than 1,300 seats would have far reaching implications on children who come from low-income households and more likely than their peers to start kindergarten without the foundation needed to succeed in school. Research shows that students who lag behind their classmates continue to do so throughout school and later in life.

“Their home environment isn’t optimal for learning,” said Mindy Barbakoff, director of Child Space Too Day Care Center, which was recognized earlier this year by city officials as a model program. “By cutting Head Start slots, we’re denying the neediest population the ingredients for them to be successful. What we’re doing is really getting them ready to learn.”

Public Citizens for Youth and Children, an organization that advocates for quality education, lamented the loss of pre-K seats for a fifth straight year.

“This year sees a nearly 300-seat change for pre-K in the district,” PCCY said in a statement. “Unfortunately, it’s 300 seats in the wrong direction. Nearly 17,000 children are enrolled in kindergarten classes in Philadelphia each year and the overwhelming share of them come from very poor families. Since 2009, the school district has lost 1,340 pre-K seats.”

“We know that pre-K can be the difference when it comes to graduating high school, enrolling in college and escaping the cycle of poverty. Kids in suburban and private schools often already have a leg up on their inner-city counterparts; this just put the city’s kids further behind,” the release stated.

Federal sequestration and a $1.34 million decrease in federal Title I funding both figured into the loss of pre-K and Head Start programs in Philadelphia, according to school officials and PCCY.

Title I grants were authorized under then-President George H.W. Bush as part of the Improving America’s Schools Act of 1994. However, the Federal Education Budget Project pointed out that it wasn’t until his son, George W. Bush, was serving as president that the funding was appropriated. The authorization was amended as part of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.

Janet Filante, executive director of Childspace Cooperative Development Inc., owner and operator of day-care businesses in Germantown and West Philadelphia, said, “We don’t want to see a decrease in Head Start. We want to see an increase. Philadelphia should have more skin in the game in terms of early education.”

“We would love to see it go in the other direction whether it’s public, private, or both. There needs to be more quality early childhood education. We’re not finding very much of it in the city,” she said.

Filante said that the school district could realize major savings on special education if fewer students require remedial help.

“The long-term potential is very exciting,” she said. “That’s our long-term vision, and we want to be ready for whenever Washington gets its act together and can get behind the vision that the President has laid out and provide more pre-K programs. We want Philadelphia to have more programs that are ready to provide that level of service.”

According to the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, only three of 10 four-year-olds are enrolled in high-quality programs that provide children with the grounding needed to start kindergarten.

Pre-K classes and Head Start, a federal program geared for students from low- and moderate-income families, provide children with a solid foundation for learning that is often lacking in many children from low-income families with parents who tend to be less educated, have fewer resources, and spend less time engaging their children in enriching experiences, such as providing reading books or taking them to a library or orchard.

Barbakoff said that basic skills, such as being able to correlate numerals to an exact count and being able to identify and pronounce letters from the alphabet, are among the skills that prepare students for more advanced learning.

“There’s definitely a difference in being able to sing the alphabet song and identifying a letter,” she said.

Some students can recite the alphabet but are unable to recognize a certain letter when that letter is called out. When asked to pick up five crayons, a child either scoops up a handful or admits being stumped, Barbakoff said. These basic concepts are reinforced in early childhood education so that children “really learn what numbers mean.”

Students also learn to identify colors, shapes, how to learn in a group, use their words properly, and work on fine motor skills, such as holding a pencil.

The Philadelphia Tribune – October 11, 2013 – Read article online