Governor Andy Beshear’s biennium budget proposal certainly comes with bells and whistles, thrills and shrills. With a Republican super-majority in both the State House and State Senate, he’s shooting for the moon and hoping to land somewhere among the stars.
But if there’s one specific thing his office continues to push on a consistent, thorough basis over the last month, it’s the desire to make pre-kindergarten and kindergarten a universal and fundamental right for Kentuckians and their families, through the state’s General Fund.
During Thursday’s “Team Kentucky” update, Beshear’s Lieutenant Governor Jacqueline Coleman illustrated four reasons why this elected office keeps making pre-K an major priority.
First and foremost, Coleman noted that pre-K learning creates a strong foundation for the state’s “littlest learners,” and that no ZIP code, nor socioeconomic standard, should predetermine one’s future.
Coleman stated that pre-school/child care costs run anywhere from $6,000 to $12,000 annually per child, depending on their location in Kentucky, and that providing state-funded preschool care would bring substantial cost-savings to families.
This, in turn, would turn into cost-savings for the Commonwealth.
Pre-K promotes immediate and long-term academic success, Coleman urged, and furthermore, she said that recent data showed only 51% of Kentucky’s 4- and 5-year-olds were kindergarten ready, and only 50% of Kentucky’s high school graduates were prepared to pursue post-secondary educational opportunities at the vocational and academic levels.
It’s a trend this administration would like to target and amend in the next two years, and Coleman referenced research out of the state of Oklahoma as a qualifier.
And finally, Coleman said universal pre-K would provide an immediate, long-term boon on Kentucky’s workforce. She pointed to how public kindergarten provided the United States with an influx of new employees between 1950 and 1990, particularly women, and mentioned that more than 40% of the nation’s single mothers joined the workforce during that 40-year span at the same exact time that their children entered into school systems.
Another benefit to the state providing universal pre-K — Coleman argued it provided child-care options in locales that can often be deserts for families seeking child-rearing.
Beshear’s budgetary notions stem from a $1.9 billion revenue surplus in Kentucky’s General Fund — an all-time, record-setting amount.