While we are on the topic of Massachusetts support of Early Childhood Education… Corporate Charity for the national franchise corporate school - the Goddard School? Shame on Goddard School’s corporate greed at the expense of Massachusetts preschool children.
The Department of Early Education and Care (EEC) is tasked with insuring, among many other things, that the Commonwealth’s early childhood education and child care infrastructure is of sufficient quality to support the needs of the children of Massachusetts. To this end the EEC has precious few dollars that it can offer the community in the form of grants. These grants are intended to help offset the cost of individuals and programs to continue to educate themselves and improve the quality of programs they offer children. These are indeed precious dollars and the “spirit” of the legislation that put these dollars in place was to insure that programs that could not afford to improvements and continuing education for their staff would be able to do make these improvement none the less.
Given that the Commonwealth’s early childhood education and child care infrastructure is a mixture of non-profits, public agencies and for-profit organizations, these grants are technically open to all comers. In spirit, a fine strategy to insure that these programs stay viable. A strong argument could be made (and perhaps should) that for-profit organization should not be entitled to these grants and that “profits” should be reinvested into the quality of the programs. However, the legislator recognized that many of these for profit programs many not indeed make this investment and given the limited public resources available to Massachusetts children, the resulting diminished quality of for-profit programs could actually hurt both quality and access to preschool for many Massachusetts children. So the for-profit inclusion is there - regardless of if you like it our not - its there.
On March 7th, the EEC announce its preliminary list of grantees. There it is - plan as day - the Goddard School in Auburn MA. Mind you, there are several other for-profits on the list, but few so boldly market their commitment to “…continuing education for the on-going development of teachers and directors” or go out of their way to state that their quality standards exceed state requirements. If this is the case, why does the Goddard School corporation need taxpayer-funded charity to help them stay up to the standards the state requires? Something is amiss. Either the Goddard School’s marketing hype is inaccurate or they are just greedily grabbing money that was intended to help small preschool and childcare programs that barely turn a profit. This is a corporation that boosts about its Goddard University and even has a different logo for its quality assurance program.
We suspect the Goddard School will argue that the grant will help them offset the cost of implementing a state quality measurement that will be instituted in the advent of the approval of universal pre-k. However, following this logic, Goddard School is asking for taxpayer funding to educate their staff so they can get more taxpayer money in the future. Goddard School, at the very least invest a few dollars into your supposed quality programs to insure you can get our tax dollars in the future, don’t make our children pay for this minimal investment that the huge majority of non-profits have chosen to make on their own. That’s right, the huge majority of non-profit schools and child care programs are making this investment without taxpayer dollars. Apparently the Goddard School can’t afford this investment.
Shame on the Goddard School. Regardless of your politics or feelings about public support of private schools or for-profit organizations - Goddard School’s hypocrisy is too great to overlook. It violates the spirit of the legislation, it violates public trust, it victimizes the EEC which is bound to treat all for-profits the same, and most of all the Goddard School is taking money that was intended to serve the children of Massachusetts - not their franchisees or shareholders.
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This is an outrage! I can’t believe any for-profit corporation gets a single taxpayer dollar. But Goddard School - they are merciless about putting better schools out of business. Do the parents that use Goddard School know that they are paying twice - once with tuition and a second time with their tax dollars.
The Boston Globe did a story on bus service for private schools - they need to do a story on this.
How much are they cheating us for anyway? How much is the grant?
I looked at the EEC website - the grant to Goddard School could be anywhere up to $75,000!!!
I agree that the state should help improve preschool quality in Massachusetts - but its crazy that big companies like Goddard School are getting my tax dollars. I noticed that their are other for-profits schools on the list but most of them are small local businesses.
I noticed that the other national chains like Next Generation haven’t asked for a grant (or at least they weren’t approved). Maybe they recognize how sleazy this is and Goddard School doesn’t care.
Mass Preschool, how can you honestly make the conclusions above? You set up your argument by stating that “you suspect” Goddard school owners might say something and then make conclusions based on your suspicions.
How about actually calling the Goddard owners and asking what they are doing with the money? I suspect that they might be paying teachers more money, complying with new laws or offering scholarships. But I don’t know what they are really doing until I ask.
And why are you shaming them for participating in a program set up for to improve thier schools. According to your research, this program is “open to all comers” and the legislature knew it was open to the “for profits”. Shouldn’t you considering taking to task any school or daycare program that didn’t care enough about their kids to figure out how they could improve and then ask for money to do so? Maybe that’s in the next blog.
I’m not from Massachusetts or the Goddard Schools. Just someone who believes that an honest attempt to research is a prerequisite before attacking someone’s character. You didn’t do that.
We at MassPreschool did indeed attempt to discuss this with Goddard Schools corporate offices. The representative we talked to had no knowledge of its “franchisee’s participation”.
In turn, this funding is not “research”. It was intended to increase the state’s early childhood education infrastructure. Goddard School in a national franchised chain. A for-profit pure and simple. We simply question the public policy that put taxpayer dollars in the hands of for-profit business people. In every other business environment - there are outcries when taxpayer dollars are diverted to the pockets of large corporations.
This is our opinion and we welcome everyone’s opinion. We have yet to hear an explanation as to how this use of tax payer dollars will benefit the tax payers. We subsidize farmers to keep food prices low because it benefits everyone. We subsidize the oil industry to keep oil prices low which benefits everyone. Who benefits from this subsidy of Goddard School? Given the intended use of this money - only the Goddard School benefits because they taut that they already exceed state requirements. You can’t have it both ways. If a given institutions infrastructure already exceed the state’s current and future requirements, how is it a good use of taxpayer funds to give these institutions taxpayer dollars. Wouldn’t it be of greater benefits to provide the funds to those institutions that need to invest in their infrastructure to keep up with the changing standards? By using these funds to benefit an institution, in this chance a for-profit franchise, that has other sources of funds, in effect denies those funds to other institutions that genuinely need it.
Thank you for reigniting this issue. We will investigate further.