Council considers funding for pre-k
More than $4M would go to preschools
The Columbus City Council will consider an ordinance Monday that would allocate more than $4 million in general fund dollars into pre-k learning programs, money that will be added to state dollars and distributed to more than two dozen preschool operations across the city.
The Early Start Columbus program aims to expand quality prekindergarten services through partnerships with Columbus City Schools and communitybased providers that are rated at least three stars in Ohio’s five-star “Step Up To Quality” rating system.
“It’s a no-brainer investment and it saves money down the line,” said Columbus City Council member Elizabeth Brown, the measure’s sponsor.
A recently released study from Ohio State University’s Crane Center for Early Childhood Research and Policy found that about half of children age 5 and under in Franklin County participated in an out-of-home preschool arrangement during the work week, which is about 10 percentage points lower than the national average of 60% of parents using a preschool.
And in three targeted low-income neighborhoods in Columbus — Linden, the Hilltop and South Side — only 47% of young children were enrolled in preschools, about 5 percentage points behind the rest of the city.
“The relatively low ECE (Early Care and Education) participation rate among Franklin County families as compared with the nation more generally may reflect significant barriers to
finding quality care for children, with nearly 60% of respondents indicating that quality care is somewhat or very difficult to find,” the study said.
Seven out of 10 parents reported to researchers that the most significant barriers to ECE participation for their children related to a “poor quality rating.”
Franklin County families with young children consider quality “the most important indicator of ECE programming and report that finding quality care is difficult,” the study said.
While finding quality day care is critical, the COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc on the entire preschool sector, USA Today found.
Close to 3 million women left the U.S. labor force during the pandemic, including in the 94% female-dominated child care industry, where a little more than half of the workers are mothers. According to some estimates, child care lost 1 in 6 of its jobs while COVID-19 raged, USA Today reported in June.
The Dispatch reported in May that many Ohio child care centers were experiencing staffing shortages, limiting the number of children they can enroll as many parents transition back to the office after working from home during the pandemic.
More than a third of centers in the state were struggling to find enough qualified early childhood educators, with nearly 1,000 job openings estimated currently, according to a survey from Action for Children, a central Ohio child-care resource and referral agency.
“We are in a crisis,” Gina Ginn, CEO of Columbus Early Learning Centers, which operates five centers in Linden and the Near East Side, said in May. “We need new people to enter into the field of early childhood.”
All of this underscores the importance of the city program, which provides resources to preschools to up their game, transitioning from simple day care to a learning environment, as studies suggest that children who are academically prepared when they enter kindergarten will have greater success later in school and in life.
“To catch up to the national average, we’ve got to do more” to support working families and their children, Brown said.
“Early childhood investments are one of the wisest investments we can make,” she said. wbush@gannett.com @Reporterbush