Preschool in the Public Schools

School Administrator, Jan, 2000 by Kimberly Reeves

Space and funding for prekindergarten remain elusive, but some districts find partners in Head Start, social services

The doors to the Molly Stark School in Bennington, Vt., swing open at first light and don't close until early evening, and that's the way Principal Sue Maguire likes it.

Five years ago, Molly Stark was an elementary school. Today it's a family center that focuses on social services, along with the academics from preschool through 6th grade. From sunup to early evening, the school is bustling with activities for its 440 students and their parents. Through state and federal grants, as well as Medicare reimbursements, Molly Stark has expanded its role in the small southwestern Vermont community.

Molly Stark has its own preschool program and a licensed day-care center. On-site family outreach workers teach parents the best ways to read to their children through literacy breakfasts, educational games and a lending library. A pediatrician, psychologist and dentist visit to provide services to the children. The local community college teaches on-site adult basic education courses. The goal for the blended staff is to reach entire families.

The strategy of Molly Stark--to involve families early and often in education--is nothing more than "the right thing to do for kids," says Maguire, who has spent all 23 years of her education career at the Vermont elementary school. Instead of the piecemeal programs of the past, the Molly Stark model integrates education with both social and health services on one site, starting services at an early age.

"If we're going to do this, we're going to do it right," Maguire says. "The pendulum in education swings back and forth, and we keep doing the same things wrong. We typically do snippets of programs until the money runs out. Then we say we can't do it anymore. Instead, we need to take a comprehensive approach, a two-generation strategy, to education."

A Comprehensive School

For Maguire and her team at Molly Stark, the notion of starting education in families both early and comprehensively was a logical extension of the school staffs study of brain-based learning. Even though Vermont has offered county-based preschool centers for several years, the ambitious family center concept at Molly Stark was a hard sell to some local social service agencies that Maguire invited to Molly Stark less than five years ago.

"When we began to develop our vision, I invited every director of every agency in town to our school," Maguire says. "I told them, 'Here's our vision and here's where we're going."' The comfort level among the agencies varied, Maguire says. Some bought into the concept immediately. Others took more time. Often the question arose, "Is this the school's job?" Maguire says. The school's No. 1 job is always education, Maguire agrees, but sometimes underlying non-academic problems make it difficult for a child to focus on learning a math or reading skill.

They decided to go ahead with the people they had.

What a difference five years can make. Today, those same social service agencies are clamoring to be a part of

Molly Stark's comprehensive family center concept. Intervening outside pressures such as welfare reform and the redirection of federal Head Start funding to collaborative efforts means the idealized year-round "comprehensive school" educators touted two decades ago is closer to reality than ever, all with the federal government's blessing.

"The trend is toward these types of collaborative arrangements between public schools and Head Start, social services and child care," says New York-based education consultant Anne Mitchell, who tracks prekindergarten. "I think the truth of the matter is that those who fund schools realized that to create an early childhood program and not use Head Start and other good child-care centers would be wasteful. The motivation that legislators have is efficiency."

Growing Pains

The concept of serving children between the years of three and five has a long history of acceptance among educators. Few dispute the benefits of preparing young children, especially those in poverty, to be ready for the classroom. Tallies indicate 42 states invest funds in state prekindergarten initiatives.

That broad acceptance, however, has been coupled with limited funding. According to "Seeds of Success," a report on state prekindergarten initiatives released by the Children's Defense Fund last fall, state spending on prekindergarten has expanded from $700 million during the 1991-92 school year to $1.7 billion during the 1998-99 school year. The number of children served has jumped accordingly, from 290,000 to 725,000.

That still leaves the vast number of young children out of the loop for prekindergarten. Most states limit their funding to only the neediest children. Three-quarters of all state spending on prekindergarten is concentrated in 10 states: California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Texas. Funding is so low in a state like Tennessee that only 2 percent of eligible children are actually being served by prekindergarten programs.