Recession babies

The juxtaposition of two articles in the news last Wednesday caught my attention.

Forty-four New York City schools were removed from the New York State Education Department’s “needs improvement” list, which follows federal guidelines according to the No Child Left Behind initiative. While 32 other New York City schools were added to the list, numerous news articles wrote about the positive 12 school net total as a measure of success—evidence of slow but steady improvement.

The same day, newspapers reported on the mini baby boom of 2007. According to recently released data, there were more babies born in 2007 (4,317,000) than in 1957 at the height of the baby boom. The figures from 2007 also reveal a record number of births to unmarried women.

So on the one hand, in a broad sense, our schools are improving just slightly. Perhaps this is evidence of the priority that some elected officials have given to public education. On a macro level, our state-wide budget, for instance, shows a steady increase in funds directed towards the Department of Education—from just over $38 million for 2007-2008 to over $41 million for 2008-2009 and nearly $45 million projected for the following year. But with more and more children being born in the past few years (experts say this trend will likely mellow with the recession), we clearly still have lots of work to do.

Early childhood programs must be included in any education budget not only to benefit the children but also to support any economic stimulus and any healthy economy in the long term. Supporting a workforce means more than offering jobs or job training—it means enabling people to accept such jobs by helping to remove factors that prevent them from working at all.

President Obama’s new budget makes early childhood education a priority. Yet the language in his budget on this issue is vague—it calls for “additional resources to encourage state and local investment in early childhood education.” While many experts say that the president’s budget is likely to result in increases of up to 14 percent for New York State early childhood education programs and nearly $168 million for the state’s childcare programs (effectively doubling present budgets), it remains to be seen exactly how such increased funding will be used and by whom.

In the fall of 2007, New York governor Eliot Spitzer was regarded as a leader in improving early childhood education when his budget for the year included a historic $146 million, or a 50 percent increase in pre-kindergarten funding. It was estimated that this increase in funding enabled an additional 22,800 New York children (a 36 percent increase) to attend pre-kindergarten classes. In addition, the governor created a Children’s Cabinet charged with improving and expanding childhood development programs.

But in the past few years, critics have argued that such initiatives have left much to be desired. In August 2008, the New York Times reported that more than one-third of New York school districts had no early childhood education programs and fewer than 38 percent of the state’s four-year-olds attended state-funded pre-kindergarten classes. The article reports that in 2007, districts passed up $67.5 million of the $438 million the state directed towards such programs, stating that they would still have to cut other programs to offer pre-kindergarten classes to all eligible children.

In addition to the shortcomings in universal pre-kindergarten, many in the field fear that this year will see budget cuts in other early childhood programming. Just last week the Public News Service released an article on the potential threat that the coming New York State budget poses to public childcare programs. The article reports that the funding for state-sponsored childcare has yet to be outlined in next year’s budget. As of now, the money is lumped in the general Flexible Fund for Family Services. Advocates for the fund argue that it allows local governments to decide which programs to fund. Opponents say such programs need their own reserved budgets.

While the president’s budget is likely to help with funding such early childhood care and development, with local and state governments’ budgets so strained at present, it is unlikely that all needs will be met by such “additional resources.” But communities can and should keep public child support, pre-kindergarten, and education a priority and should work to better such systems in other ways. Maybe more employers should develop workplace cooperative daycare or preschool programs. Maybe communities, neighborhoods, buildings, or churches could begin nanny-sharing programs or ask moms to volunteer a for weekday’s worth of childcare. Retired seniors or college students could be a great asset to our public schools, offering volunteering expertise and programming support. We face a growing population and, most likely, despite stimulus packages, increasingly limited local funding. We must not change our priorities—maybe just our approaches.

MaryAlice Parks is a Columbia College senior majoring in history and political science. She is a co-coordinator of Artists Reaching Out. The Albright runs alternate Tuesdays. opinion@columbiaspectator.com