Homework needed before expanding PED’s pre-K

The New Mexico Department of Education maintains it needs an additional $7 million to meet the demand for pre-K next school year. Officials made that plea earlier this month while painting the picture of small children being turned away en masse from public schools.

“Children will be turned away, and others will be served in half-day rather than full-day programs,” Gwen Perea Warniment, a PED deputy secretary, told Journal reporter Shelby Perea for a June 20 front-page story.

And that is a heartbreaking tale of looming woe. Except.

Except this is exactly why the New Mexico Legislature approved, and Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed, a bill creating an office of Early Childhood Education instead of a bill that would have put Pre-K under PED.

While Perea Warniment says there are 1,067 additional applications for pre-K slots this coming school year, and close to 2,000 more families seeking the fullday program then last year, PED has no idea how many of those families are also looking at/on lists for other pre-K programs — with private-sector companies, folks who operate out of their homes, churches, federally funded Head Start, the Children, Youth and Families Department, home-school, etc. Every district and school administrator will tell you there can be a big difference between projected and actual enrollment.

Besides, PED knew how much money it had for the coming year for pre-K — up from $36.7 million last school year to $42.5 million for the 2019-20 school year. That should have dictated how many seats to make available and to plan for.

And that leads to the question of the quality of these additional new pre-K programs, given that school starts in a matter of weeks and the classrooms, teachers and materials are apparently all up in the air.

Legislative Finance Committee Director David Abbey is correct when he says “before we can have a clear picture of whether there is a shortfall (in PED), you need to see all the programs laid out, and we are only seeing some of them.” He specifically notes that crowding out programs like Head Start means a cut in federal funding, and it bears adding that crowding out private-sector, religious and child-care programs means those New Mexico businesses, groups and individuals take a financial hit.

One of the new Early Childhood department’s goals is to compile such information, to first get solid data on programs available and needs both met and unmet, and to then ensure resources are deployed as efficiently as possible for the greatest return on investment — getting kids truly ready for kindergarten.

Abbey echoes that sentiment when he says PED’s pitch is “as much a management issue as a funding issue. PED, CYFD, the school districts and the Head Start agencies all have to coordinate. They have to go through and say who is serving what, when, where and right-size this program.”

And they need to do that before handing another $7 million of taxpayer money to PED.