Preschool Enters the 21st Century ... finally

Sacramento's known for its toasty summers, but the afternoon was quite pleasant in the (dry) high '80s when I picked up Leroy from his afternoon daycare. I chatted with his teachers and some of his friends, and we left for home.

Leroy's been attending his particular daycare for two years now. He started when he began kindergarten. The daycare program is on-site, which meant that he simply had to go from class across a short yard to aftercare. As he was still on the school grounds, he could eat in the school cafeteria.

The program works under contract with the school district. This means it's subsidized in part. The rates are a hundred dollars a month less than local private care. Best of all, the staff gets paid a decent wage, with benefits. As a result, they stay. His private daycare, before he started school, attracted decent enough staff but many of them were in life transition. The young ones were working before or right after college. The older ones were often just working to get out of the house. There was easily about a fifty percent turnover each year, and the owner bemoaned how hard it was to get folks to stay for longer than two years.

There's a long argument wracking Congress over how to re-authorize the welfare bill. Part of it deals with how to fund daycare for workers going back in to the workforce.

The rightwingers want to limit it. The sensible people realize that a worker who can't pay for daycare won't be a worker much longer. The rightwingers don't like the idea of mommy not playing "Donna Reed" like the "good old days." The sensible people realize that that was then, this is now, the time of the two-income couple and single moms.

So we need universal daycare. The arguments against it are pretty much the ones heard 150 years ago when universal public education was first proposed. "Why is some other kid -my- responsibility?" Because when every child is educated, and comes into school well-attended and prepared, we all do better.

It's really just an extension of the universal public education, given what we demand out of kids today.

Kindergarten was developed on the idea of giving kids some prep on the basics of sitting in class. That's been done away with. Today's kindergarteners get homework. It's really not kindergarten anymore, it's pre-first grade. Preschool/childcare has become what kindergarten used to be. We need to finally accept that.

Like most good progressive ideas, this is built on enlightened self-interest.

Like public education, it will come. And it will come because business will insist on it. Just as the economic interests understood the need for an educated workforce 150 years ago, so they'll come to see the value of kids coming into school well-prepared. They'll also see the value of workers who aren't juggling home and family care as much. I know from my own experience and that of my co-workers with kids, you're a lot more focused when you know your young 'un is well-cared for while you're at the office. Many business benefit packages already offer childcare reimbursement as part of pre-tax benefits.

They'll come 'round. You can't outsource everything. Some economics are predicting another coming labor shortage, which puts employees back in the driver's seat, as it did with health care during the Clinton Prosperity of the '90s. Little Jane and Johnnie will like that.

For an interesting brief on the need for universal pre-school:

http://readysetgrowctkids.org/press_article_35.html