Preschool in Massachusetts - Where Do We Stand?
Feb 14th, 2008 by masspreschools
After yesterday’s post we received several e-mails as you might imagine. Turns out that many of our readers are Republician and thought that our characterization of McCain and Huckabee’s positions lacked depth. It admittedly does - we simply reported how AP has characterized the candidates position. In fairness, we will follow up in the future to go into more depth on each candidate.
Several other e-mails questioned why we are even concerned with the Universal Preschool issue. One pointed out that without exception, the schools discussed on this forum and suggested by readers are exclusively private (and expensive). By definition those schools and the children that attend them will not be effected by Universal Preschool. As one person put it - “What’s the deal?”
The answer has two parts: The fact that the schools suggested by our contributors are all private is actually part of the problem. We ask contributors, all Massachusetts parents, to suggest the best preschools in the State. To date, those preschools have been private. We argue the point about them being expensive. Some are but a few are actually relatively affordable. But our request for recommendations of “high quality preschools” reveals the problem. In the view of our readers/contributors (at least to date) high quailty preschools happen to be private schools. Why? Because the public preschools are overwhelmed, understaffed and underfunded. Some of the best teachers in the country work in Massachusetts Preschools, but the programs cannot keep up with the demands placed on them.
So why support Universal Preschool in Massachusetts. Because the strains on the public preschool system is simply to great to sustain and the private system will never be able to pick up the slack. If this situation endures the huge majority of children will go without preschool and our society will suffer in the long run. The gap between public and private preschools will persist - but that gap is too wide today and must be narrowed for the well being of our own children (even those that attend private preschools now).
Read the Patriot Ledger series of reports on “day care” in Massachusetts. This series of stories addresses both day care and early education. After reading this, consider how children that do attend high quality private schools will be better off as adults if the public school system continues to flounder. This is not a criticism of private preschools - we simply can’t condone leaving so many children behind. It will undermine all children in the not so distant future.
We should also note that several of the private preschools often discussed here are strong supporters of universal preschool.
So where do we stand? Governor Patrick has proposed a $25 million infusion into the public preschool system that will add 892 pre-k classrooms, increase half day programs to full day in 440 classes and add money to training new preschool teachers.
The criticisms are good but lets follow up. Submit your examples of excellent public preschools.
Please let us know you thoughts.
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That daycare story is great but have you noticed how expensive the preschools are on your blog. They are all more than $10,000 a year! You need to recommend quality but affordable preschools. Please.
Jill - we agree that high quality preschool is indeed too expensive. But notice that a some of the preschools we added so far are of the highest quality and affordable preschools. The Preschool at Happy Hollow School in our Metrowest Preschools page and the North Shore Nursery School in our North Shore Preschools page both offer exceptional programs for less than $10,000 per year full time.
Please let us know if you have any recommendations that we can follow up on.