Early childhood education proposals die in legislative committee

Wyoming is one of six states without state-funded preschool for 4-year-olds, despite the significant social and economic benefits of early childhood education being well documented and widely acknowledged by policy makers. At roughly 35%, the portion of Wyoming 3- and 4-year-olds who attend preschool lags far behind the national average of about 50%.

Equipped with facts like these, Sen. Chris Rothfuss (D-Laramie) pushed last week to permanently fund early childhood education programs through a new state endowment.

The Legislature’s Joint Education Committee, however, voted Wednesday to not explore his proposal. It’s the latest example of Wyoming lawmakers’ reluctance to invest in preschool programs.

The Education Committee’s No. 1 priority for the interim is to study early childhood education and child care to understand how well prepared Wyoming’s kids are for kindergarten — and to identify policy options to improve their readiness.

At last week’s interim meeting, two proposals produced by the committee’s members — Rothfuss’s and another that would require preschools to administer a kindergarten readiness program — failed to gather sufficient support to proceed.

Rep. Karlee Provenza (D-Laramie), who supported the endowment, expressed frustration at the hemming and hawing.

“We’ve been talking about all the benefits of this for years,” she said. “My entire time in the Legislature, we’ve spent hundreds of hours on this topic … and we have yet to produce a real solution.”

Not just any pre-K

In March Wyoming passed an “education savings account” law . The law, which parental-rights advocates supported, creates a program to give income-qualified families state funds to offset the costs of private and homeschool education. Pre-K for kids as young as 4 narrowly survived as a qualified use of such funds, despite lawmakers’ attempts to strip it out.

During those conversations, education advocates stressed the need to ensure that state-supported preschool programs meet the approved standard of “quality” early childhood education. The committee honed in on that idea during last week’s meeting.

“If we want to do pre-K in the state of Wyoming, if we want that return on investment … we need to make sure that we do it well,” Wyoming Education Association’s Government Relations Director Tate Mullen said.

Dr. Steven Barnett and Ellen Frede, co-directors of the National Institute for Early Education Research, gave a presentation to the committee laying out data and policy options related to so-called quality education. They highlighted evidence of benefits that include:

• Increased third grade reading comprehension and numeracy.

• Better attendance, less grade repetition in high school.

• Increased high school graduation and college attendance.

• Decreased special education.

“Early childhood is not the end-all-and-be-all, but it’s an important period for setting into place the foundation that we want for folks to be successful throughout a lifetime,” Barnett said.

Quality early childhood education also requires adequate funding, he said. That’s because “quality” is more than just a safe classroom and adults to watch children as their parents are at work. It entails everything from specially trained teachers to small class sizes and curriculum supports. It incorporates programmatic instruction to help children develop socially, emotionally, cognitively and physically.

Barnett pointed to Wyoming-specific challenges that high-quality preschool programs could allay. Among them: Wyoming’s declining reading and math proficiency scores and a need to attract and grow quality workers.

At the same time, Mullen said, there is major cost-saving potential for special-education costs, social safety net programs, lost wages for employees and lost revenue for state businesses.

No traction

Rothfuss made his pitch on the heels of the presentation.

“We’ve been discussing this for a long time, and first and foremost, what we would need to do would be to have funding for it,” he said. “And I think the only long-term appropriate way to fund it is to set up an endowment.”

He moved to draft legislation to create an early childhood education endowment. Further exploration and details could be worked out later, he said.

Reception, however, was mixed.

“I think you can get too specific in endowing a thing and tie your hands,” Sen. Charlie Scott (R-Casper) said. The state also put some money toward pre-K with the education savings accounts, he added. “That’s a perfectly good way to fund a preschool if you’re going to.”

The ESA program uses general funds, which makes that program vulnerable to elimination in future budget cutting, Rothfuss said. An endowment would ensure permanence. The ESA program is also limited to income-qualified families.

“That is not the same as providing an opportunity for everyone in the state to have affordable access to early childhood education that is high-quality education,” he said.

Wyoming has about $2 billion in unrealized capital gains right now in its investment portfolio, Rothfuss said, “so we have the money available.”

Sen. Cheri Steinmetz (R-Lingle) urged the committee to exercise fiscal responsibility by voting no.

Provenza, however, bemoaned the committee’s lack of support.

“I’m sick of coming to this committee and talking about the things that are so good, and then we don’t do them,” Provenza said. “So I think the least we can do is start working towards a goal … have an end game that we can get to and say, look, people of Wyoming, we worked hard and we showed up for you.”

Wyoming should not keep ignoring the enormous benefits pre-K promises for its children and communities, Rothfuss said.

“For as long as I’ve been on this committee, early childhood education has been identified each and every time we’ve gone through this discussion as the single most significant thing we could do to improve education in the state of Wyoming, based on the system we have,” he said.

His motion failed to gather enough votes to pass, however.

A reflection of state values?

Before Rothfuss’ endowment attempt, the committee considered another proposal related to early childhood education.

That draft bill would require preschools to be certified by the state as a way for parents to differentiate between facilities providing quality early childhood education and those providing child care. That certification would mandate preschools to administer a kindergarten readiness program. The state currently does not have a definition of “kindergarten readiness.”

Sen. Scott drafted the 12-page bill with a Legislative Service Office attorney after the committee requested it at its June meeting. He told the committee the bill’s kindergarten readiness definition was a placeholder that needed refinement.

But the discussion that ensued did not accomplish that refinement, and in the end, the committee voted to table the bill indefinitely.

Later, as lawmakers discussed the endowment, Rep. Landon Brown (R-Cheyenne) said he agreed that bringing forward ideas and never producing solutions is tiring. He cited the results of the Aug. 20 primary election — where the hard-right Freedom Caucus made gains in the statehouse — as proof that Wyoming voters are seeking different educational outcomes, however. Voters don’t appear interested in supporting public education, he said.

“They want to continue putting the money into the ESAs,” Brown said, “and they want to continue putting money into the charter school systems.”

Citing all the work that went into Scott’s bill, Brown voted no on the endowment to avoid putting resources into a measure that “is going to be put on a back burner and absolutely nothing is going to be done with it” during the session, he said.

The committee did pass one measure that made slight amendments to reading assessments and intervention rules.

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