State Says Districts May Delay Preschool Start-Up, But Many Want To Move Ahead

Vermont’s Agency of Education has surprised many school districts by delaying the start of a new law mandating universal pre-school. The programs were supposed to be ready by next fall, but the agency says it needs more time to hammer out details and schools need more time to budget.

Many districts want to forge ahead anyway.

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And that is even true in places that are starting to offer pre-school for the first time, either in school or child care settings.  For example, The Orange-Windsor Supervisory Union has been working hard to build a pre-K program as mandated by the law signed amid fanfare last spring. There’s much more to do, says Cynthia Powers, the district’s grant coordinator.

And yet, when she heard about the deadline extension, she felt not relief, but “horror.”  Powers says she felt as though “everything that we had worked for the past year was crumbling underneath our feet, because I was so proud of the fact that we have these 46 extra kids in preschool and now their fate was in jeopardy.”

In jeopardy, she fears, because while the state provides a share of education costs, under a complex funding formula, local taxpayers also have to ante up.

“If they don’t have to I think school boards are going to be reluctant to put in the full funding that they need to continue these programs that we’ve already started,” she explains.

While waiting for pre-K dollars to flow from the state, Powers has been using grant money to start new programs. But now she's not sure how to keep those new slots open for another year. Emily Marshia, assistant director of the Orange County Parent and Child Center, and a school board member in Chelsea, shares that concern about the delay.

“I don’t think it’s something that’s widely understood or known yet in the general community but we’re starting to get questions, definitely, about what the future looks like.”

About 70 percent of Vermont's 3 and 4-year-olds are in preschool. The new law is likely to drive that number up in two years. But next year? That’s now a question mark. 

Ranny Bledsoe, school superintendent in St. Johnsbury, says, “It certainly caught us by surprise that the state was going to make implementation optional this year.”

Since St. Johnsbury already offers pre-K in its elementary school, Bledsoe says the delay does not affect that program. But it could slow new funding for local child care centers already hiring or training preschool teachers. Still, Bledsoe says, most of those providers want to partner with the St. Johnsbury district as quickly as possible. And she says many public school administrators she knows also want to move ahead with early education initiatives.

The state’s memo to districts does not discourage them from moving ahead on their own. Rather, it merely offers relief in the event that the rules come out too late to be considered in school budget votes for 2015.