Early education is worthy expense

Hawaii seems to be a late arrival where early learning is concerned. According to a recent national study, it is one of only 11 states that lacks publicly supported program that would make preschool broadly if not universally available.

Local statistics aren’t any more encouraging. Only four out of 10 children in the islands enter kindergarten prepared for success; these are the children who attended preschool first, according to the Hawaii State School Readiness Assessment, a measure conducted by kindergarten teachers after observing the children for the first few weeks of school.

The assessment, first launched in 2006, was developed by a task force involving the state Department of Education, Kamehameha Schools and the nonprofit Good Beginnings Alliance. All are part of a new push to get state officials off the dime and on course to build a stronger, state-subsidized preschool foundation for Hawaii’s keiki.

Anyone concerned about the prospects of the state’s next generation ought to get onboard with this advocacy work, too. Putting pressure on state lawmakers to pass Senate Bill 2545 would be a good way to start.

Conference committee members from both chambers of the Legislature this week were named to consider the bill, which would establish the Executive Office on Early Learning and appropriate money for the coming fiscal year for office operations. The House has favored $500,000; the Senate has left that figure blank.

Something in this ballpark seems a reasonable funding request, because the lawmakers are poised to give the office considerable duties for the next year. Among the other elements in the bill’s most current version:

» Junior kindergarten programs now administered at some public schools to roughly 6,000 students, originally expected to end after the next year, would be extended through the end of the 2013-2014 academic year. This is aimed to ensure that children born late in the year, who are too young to be admitted to regular kindergarten until most of them are near their sixth birthday, have access to some early education.

» The new office would prepare an implementation plan and financial projections to provide a "seamless transition" from the junior-K instruction to what is being dubbed the Keiki First Steps Program.

» The law would be changed to require students, beginning with the 2014-2015 school year, to be at least age 5 by July 31 in order to attend kindergarten. The presumption is that there would by then be some state-funded preschool options for children born later in the same year.

There is a great deal of national concern on the issue. The National Institute for Early Education Research last week issued its "State of Preschool" report, showing Hawaii among the 11 states lacking a public preschool program, but a downward trend in funding for early education has become a national phenomenon. Much of the budget cutting was driven by the recession’s dent in revenues, but the institute makes the case that this approach is penny-wise and pound-foolish.

Bolstering that case now is Be My Voice Hawaii (bemyvoicehawaii.org), a campaign enlisting the help of businesses, nonprofits, community groups, families and individuals supporting early childhood education. Members are disseminating persuasive statistics, including data showing a close correlation between preschool attendance and high performance in Grade 3 reading scores.

In addition to the loss in simple human terms, failing students cost taxpayers more in the long run, according to Good Beginnings Alliance officials. The average annual cost of a preschool pupil is $7,300, they say, far less than the more than $46,000 the state spends each year on the average prison inmate.

Those stark observations should bring clarity to the importance of treating early education as a critical investment. The Legislature has a central role here, but so do the rest of the state’s adults. A grassroots campaign like Be My Voice is a welcome movement, one that deserves broad-based support.