When junior kindergarten is eliminated at public schools next year, Tamber Miller-Garcia worries about the yearlong education gap her daughter might experience, being too old for preschool by then and too young for kindergarten.
With an October birthday, Hi‘ilei, 3, won’t meet the new age requirement for kindergarten. Beginning with the 2014-2015 school year, students will need to be at least 5 years old by July 31 to enroll in public school kindergarten.
The state’s intent was to phase out junior kindergarten — launched in 2006 for late-born 4-year-olds — while rolling out a plan for publicly funded universal preschool. Hawaii is one of 11 states without state-funded preschool.
Gov. Neil Abercrombie last year established the Executive Office on Early Learning to lead the effort in hopes of having a program in place for the 2014-15 school year.
But lawmakers this session scaled down the governor’s early-education initiatives, which could leave hundreds of children like Hi‘ilei with few options next year.
The governor’s original plan would have served most of the 5,100 so-called late-borns who would have attended junior kindergarten at public schools next year.
Lawmakers voted to convert the governor’s $25 million school readiness proposal, which was supposed to be the first step of his early-learning initiative, into a $6 million expansion of Preschool Open Doors, an existing child care program under the Department of Human Services. The money will subsidize the cost of preschool in 2014 for 900 low-income 4-year-olds, or about 18 percent of keiki born in the latter half of 2009.
Miller-Garcia, 28, said her family doesn’t meet the program’s existing income eligibility requirements.
"My husband and I both came out of public schools here, and we want the same for our daughter, but with the end of (junior kindergarten), we’ll have to maybe look into private school," Miller-Garcia said. "And that will mean money."
She said her daughter has been thriving in preschool at Seagull Schools.
"I don’t look … at preschool as a baby sitter. I see this little person growing," Miller-Garcia said. "It’s because we made the choice to put her into preschool. We are afraid that while she’ll have those tools, her learning won’t be ongoing if she has that gap."
The Abercrombie administration said its school readiness legislation would have been the catalyst for a more rigorous early-education program for all of the state’s 18,000 4-year-olds. Voters will be asked to approve a constitutional amendment next year allowing public money to be spent on private early-education programs.
Terry Lock, director of the Executive Office on Early Learning, said the added funding for Preschool Open Doors is a "really great start" but said it’s only a fraction of the original proposal.
"Some children will probably remain in preschools they’re at," Lock said. "If they don’t qualify for Preschool Open Doors, they will have to pay for their own cost of preschool. Others will probably find other means, whether it be relatives or neighbors to care for their children."
Demand is extremely high for the current Preschool Open Doors program, which is administered under a multiyear contract by the nonprofit PATCH, or People Attentive to Children.
The organization gets more than 1,000 applicants each year but can serve only 325 preschoolers with its current funding of about $1.5 million, said PATCH Executive Director Katy Chen.
"We receive hundreds and hundreds of applications and have to turn away so many families," Chen said.
Eligibility is based on a family’s monthly gross income, which cannot exceed 85 percent of the state’s median income. For example, a family of three cannot make more than $3,927 a month, according to the program’s guidelines.
Sen. Jill Tokuda, chairwoman of the Senate Education Committee, said that as part of the legislation to expand the Preschool Open Doors subsidies, a report will be required before the start of next year’s legislative session to gauge preschool demand and capacity. From there, lawmakers could decide to put more money into the program.
"We’ll be made aware of the demand out there, how many children could be served and how many more require services, and what the capacity is from the providers’ perspective," Tokuda said. "With that information at hand, we can reassess it in the coming session and consider (whether we can) and should provide additional resources above and beyond that $6 million" before the start of the 2014-15 school year.
Deborah Zysman, executive director of the Good Beginnings Alliance, said her organization plans to lobby the Legislature, as well as counties and the federal government, for additional funds next year. The statewide nonprofit has campaigned for the universal preschool plan as part of its advocacy work for early education.
"Philanthropy hasreally carried our early-education programs," she said, citing Kamehameha Schools and the Samuel N. and Mary Castle Foundation as examples. "Up until now it has been philanthropy and parents. It’s time for the state, counties and federal government to match them and play a role."
Zysman, whose son will be affected by the elimination of junior kindergarten, added, "That $6 million is the critical first piece to give children — all of them — the best possible start."
The legislation also calls for more monitoring of the Preschool Open Doors program and new reporting by preschools and the Department of Human Services — requirements that Lock of the Executive Office on Early Learning says she will work with the department to develop.
Tokuda said she will meet with early-learning advocates over the summer to explore opportunities to help middle-income families who don’t qualify for subsidies.
"My vision for this is to see Hawaii with a robust, rigorous, publicly funded early-learning system that really ensures our youngest of children are ready to succeed in school and life, regardless of their income or where they live," Tokuda said. "This really is the first step."
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Correction: Good Beginnings Alliance Executive Director Deborah Zysman credited Samuel N. and Mary Castle Foundation as an example of an organization that has invested in early education in Hawaii. An earlier version of this story misidentified the group Harold K.L. Castle Foundation.
