[F]or years, kindergarten teachers at St. Albans City School have begged Principal Joan Cavallo for a pre-K program that would better prepare struggling students for first grade.
In September, the school launched what is seen as a solution: an all-day pre-K program for 4-year-olds that includes meals, transportation and access to art, music, gym and library. A federal grant covers everything except the 10 hours a week of pre-K that school districts are required to provide under Vermont’s early education law, Act 166.
Cavallo says the full-day program will be in jeopardy when the federal money runs out in three years unless the state makes a change to its school funding calculations.
The full-day program at St. Albans City School, Cavallo says, has attracted more children from families with working parents who have a tough time juggling special transportation and childcare arrangements for 10-hour a week pre-K programs.
Last week, Cavallo asked lawmakers on the Senate Education Committee to consider raising the equalized pupil value for pre-K students to 1.0 in a few years when the federal money dries up. The change would allow schools participating in the grant-funded program to continue to offer full-time pre-K.
Pre-K students count in a school’s average daily membership — a census of how many students are in school on any given day. But under the equalized pupil system used for the education funding formula, all students are weighted. The system gives less weight to pre-K students who count as half a student than students in upper grades or students who are in the English as a Second Language program, for example.
The equalized pupil number is used to calculate the amount a school spends per student. That per pupil spending number determines the local property tax rate under the new “yield” formula. The equalized pupil value for an individual pre-K student is 0.46.
The Joint Fiscal Office has not yet researched the impact of a change to the weighting system for pre-K students on the education fund. Mark Perrault, a fiscal analyst for JFO, said the change would likely lower the per pupil spending rates for towns that offer full-time pre-K. Towns that don’t offer full time pre-K would have higher per pupil spending rates, and under the education yield formula, would end up absorbing the cost in higher local property taxes for towns that do provide full-time pre-K, he said.
In December 2014, Vermont was granted $33 million over four years to support high-quality pre-K programs serving low-income 4-year-olds for a full day. Eight supervisory unions, three school districts and three Head Start programs are using the federal pre-K expansion money, according to the Agency of Education. The grants are for children in high-need communities.
“We get the federal grant for four years. We are down one — we only have three years left. We are not the only school doing this. If we don’t move to a 1.0 for all-day kids, we won’t be able to sustain” the program, Cavallo said.
St. Albans City has offered a 10-hour a week pre-K program since 2001, but it was only with the expansion to full-day programming that the school was able, for the first time, to enroll students from low-income families who couldn’t afford full day programs for their children, Cavallo said.
“We know from the past that we couldn’t get kids into those 10-hour programs because kids couldn’t get there,” she said.
Offering full-day coverage and busing made all the difference. “It opened the doors to people we have been trying to get to pre-K for a long time,” she said. “We made their day match the kindergarten day, and we bused them.”
The 4-year-olds get access to all the enrichment programs, such as art and music, offered to kindergartners.
The school saw attendance increase to 100 percent for some students who had previously had spotty attendance, according to Cavallo.
“We are reaching children whose families cannot afford full day programs for their preschool age children,” Cavallo told lawmakers. “Our program is reaching children who are homeless, in DCF custody, and all are less than 200% poverty,” Cavallo added. The program is available to students who plan to attend St. Albans City School for their elementary education.
Research shows that pre-K is especially helpful to low-income children, who otherwise on average start school a year or more behind their peers in language skills and reading, according to the Society for Research in Child Development. Children who have access to early education are more ready for kindergarten, are not as likely to end up in special education, have improved high school graduation rates and higher college-going rates, and are less likely to have run ins with the law.
Cavallo said the children who participate in St. Albans’ pre-K program get to know the teachers and school community and become integrated more quickly, their parents are engaged earlier in their education, and teachers work as teams to create seamless connections from pre-K through the early grades.
This year, St. Albans City School has been running two all-day pre-K programs for 4-year-olds and three 10-hour-a-week programs for 3-year-olds. Act 166 dollars pay for 10 hours a week for both age groups.
All students get breakfast, lunch and a snack free of charge as part of the universal meals school program offered through a federal grant.
“We are working together, and together we are looking at how to best close the achievement gap by third grade,” Cavallo said. She said she is proud of what St. Albans City School has been able to accomplish this year but that it is a big risk since it exists because of the federal pre-K grant.
“The only thing that will let us keep doing this is a 1.0 by the time the grant runs out. If it isn’t ready in two years people will start cutting programs,” she said.
