AUGUSTA, Maine - In Augusta, there's disagreement between advocates and the LePage administration over how to go about expanding early childhood education in Maine.A bill passed last year, without the governor's signature, requires the state to begin using $4 million in casino revenues annually to launch new pre-k programs.
But this mandate was removed from the governor's two-year budget proposal, to the dismay of advocates, who say it amounts to a cut to early childhood education.
Maine education officials call this characterization unfair and incorrect, and say they plan to use other state and federal funds to achieve the goal.
So let's start with a basic premise on which everyone in this story agrees: Good public pre-k programs are a really good thing for kids.
"Look what's happening Mason! Look what you had tucked inside your ski pants! Little tiny balls of snow!" says teacher Nicole Sylvester. On a recent Friday morning, Sylvester leads her kids inside after some fun on the playground at Educare Central Maine. Sylvester helps them wrestle off their wet gloves, boots, jackets and snow pants.
"Good job Matthew! One boot. One boot. Let's get the other boot. This one. Chloe, you can go on the carpet and get a book to look at. All of our friends are going to come inside."
Kids flip through board books. A kitchen worker wheels in a cart with the day's hot lunch. This state-of-the-art facility, in Waterville, opened four-and-a-half years ago. It serves roughly 200 low-income children in its part-day and full-day classrooms.
Sixty-three percent of school districts in Maine now offer public, pre-k and the number of children enrolled in these programs has increased from just under 1,000 a decade ago to just under 5,000 today.
Rosalie Perkins says there's a powerful reason for this growth. Perkins is the pre-K coordinator in RSU 1 in Bath. "There's a plethora of research that supports the fact that early learning is extremely important and lays the foundation for all the learning that continues in school and through a person's life," Perkins says.
In recent years, leaders in an array of fields have pointed to this body of research, as they argue for an expansion of public pre-k in Maine. Business leaders say it's critical, if Maine is to improve educational attainment and develop a more highly-skilled workforce. Law enforcement says it increases the likelihood that kids will not get in to trouble later on.
So last year, the Legislature passed a bill. Rita Furlow says it laid out a way to expand preschool programs in Maine. Furlow is a senior policy analyst with the Maine Children's Alliance. "And a majority of the Legislature - two-thirds of the Legislature - decided that they wanted to have an investment of $4 million of casino money in pre-school," she says.
Furlow says $4 million of casino revenue, annually, would have provided start-up grants for school districts that want to launch new pre-K programs. But when the governor unveiled his two-year budget, the casino money mandate was gone.
"There's a famous saying around the State House: 'No legislature can bind a future legislature to do anything," says Tom Desjardin, Maine's education commissioner. Desjardin dismisses the notion that the state has backed away from its commitment to expand public pre-k programs, as some advocates now fear. The Education Department, Desjardin notes, recently applied for, and received, a $14 million early childhood education grant from the federal government.
"And so it's about $3.8 million the first year, $4.2 the next and so on," Desjardin says. "So what turned out was, we managed to find federal money to replace the amount of money recommended by the bill."
The federal grant will allow 13 districts to open nearly three dozen new pre-k classrooms and expand another 23 programs to five days a week.
"We are really excited for the 13 school districts that are going to be participating in that program," says the Children's Alliances' Rita Furlow. "But that is only for 13 school districts out of the entire state."
Furlow says an additional $4 million in casino revenue would have allowed many more districts to get programs up and running. But education officials point out that the state only brought in a little over $2 million in casino revenue last year. And Maine's gaming statutes, they say, only allow that money to be used on K-12 education.