Supporters of the
”
Preschool for All
”
state proposition on your ballot Tuesday claim the ballot
measure is a panacea. It’s not.
Supporters of the “Preschool for All” state proposition on your ballot Tuesday claim the ballot measure is a panacea. It’s not.
What Proposition 82 will do is take an estimated $2.4 billion and create a burgeoning new state educational bureaucracy for the education of 4-year-olds in the the state of California. Crime will be curbed, English Language Learners will blossom into engineers and scores in mathematics will soar …
Let’s step back from the hyperbole and think. California’s public education system is struggling mightily to right itself. There are serious issues regarding per-pupil spending, teacher training and adequate facilities. Why on earth would voters send the state on a mission to educate
4-year-olds when the problems, beginning with kindergarten students and up, should be commanding our state’s full attention?
The ballot measure has its siren song, the sweet allure of taxing the rich to fund an educational program.
But the recipe is only for a sickly sweet disaster. Spend five minutes reading Proposition 82 and it’s clear that an overwhelming bureaucracy is about to be unleashed veiled in the sacred catch-all phrase “it’s for the children.”
Let’s take one small segment that lays out this ground rule:
(3) Classes of no more than 20 children with at least one teacher and at least one instructional aide for programs whose teachers and instructional aides have met the educational requirements of subdivisions (a) and (b) of Section 14111. Until they comply with the educational requirements of subdivisions (a) and (b) of Section 14111, programs shall provide classes of no more than 24 children with at least one teacher and classes with no more than a one-to-eight adult-child ratio.
A 20-to-1 ratio and a teacher’s aide to teach the basics to 4-year-olds … hmmm, where are those teachers going to come from?
There are provisions for union representation, qualifications, ad infinitum schedules and rules. Proposition 82 is crafted so poorly that, if adopted, it will drain not only teachers from the current public school system but energy, time and money away from our schools and the improvement efforts that are under way.
It’s simply not worth it.
Proposition 82 is a classic ballot-box budgeting measure that creates, protects and infinitely perpetuates an entire new “system” that may or may not help improve education in the state. The only data that’s conclusive in this case is that billions will be funnelled to a new bureaucracy.
No on Proposition 82.
