Promise of universal prekindergarten in KC struggles with politics, money

It’s times like these that Linda Brown fears her wishes for her Luv Does Matter preschool will scatter again out of reach.

Tuition assistance for some of her families? Better pay for her underpaid teachers? Maybe some computer tablets for her classrooms? They seem just dreams again.

Because plans for a Kansas City Public Schools tax levy that had promised her a chance at a piece of a $28 million pie are on hold as a new board and superintendent rethink.

And the campaign for a statewide tobacco tax on the Nov. 8 ballot that would raise some $300 million is threatened by a political firestorm much of its own making.

The problem isn’t lack of interest. The Kansas City area’s desire for quality early childhood education runs wide and deep.

But politics, logistics and money keep getting in the way.

If there is good news, Brown said, it’s that well-trained preschool teachers and accredited preschools clearly are becoming cherished commodities.

“We used to be thought of as babysitters,” Brown said. “They’re finally realizing how important our role is.”

But the gap between where early childhood learning was and where the Kansas City area wants it to be is monstrous.

The independent Kansas City Early Learning Commission, spawned by the district in 2013, hoped to pursue a $1.05 levy to offer tuition-free preschool to all 3- and 4-year-olds in the district in both public and private schools that qualify.

And the proposed Amendment 3 tax on cigarettes, phased in to 60 cents a pack over four years, would distribute grants in every Missouri county in support of early learning programs.

But they would cover only pieces of the more than $1 billion that early learning specialists say it would take annually to offer high-quality pre-K to all 3- and 4-year-olds in Missouri.

“We’re trying to define a regional system,” said Jovanna Rohs, the director of early learning at the Mid-America Regional Council. “There is a capacity issue.”

Too many early child care workers are earning $10 an hour or less, she said. Universities are struggling to recruit students into the industry. And the infrastructure doesn’t exist yet to raise and rate the quality of programs that might benefit from an influx of funds.

If promises for early childhood funds all suddenly fell into place, Rohs said, “everyone would be scrambling for teachers.”

District tax increase

For now, Luv Does Matter keeps its “old school” look at 5500 Woodland Ave. Children trace out their letters on paper worksheets. They do group reading gathered around a teacher holding up a picture book.

“We’ve been begging to partner with the district,” she said.

The district still wants these kinds of partnerships, said Superintendent Mark Bedell, but the road there is going to look different from what had been planned with the Early Learning Commission.

“I commend all the efforts by the Early Learning Commission,” Bedell said. “They have great intentions, and we are aligned to those intentions.”

Just last spring, the commission seemed to have broad support as it and the district pushed for legislation that would enable its plan to raise the district’s levy from $4.95 to $6.

The commission needed a new law to divert the new revenue from the district and the city’s public charter schools, to be controlled by the commission.

The plan: Gather up a network of district and community preschools. Establish an independent rating system, help schools grow in capacity and distribute new public money to well-qualified programs.

The levy would sunset after five years, and by then the commission hoped to see the General Assembly create a regional taxing district that would enable a broader early childhood levy to bring many of the city’s school districts into the fold.

But the legislation — Senate Bill 996 — never made it to a vote despite general support among lawmakers.

Since then, a new district administration, a new school board and the charter schools have had second thoughts.

“We can’t force the district to do anything,” said Herb Kohn, a Kansas City attorney and leader of the Early Learning Commission.

The commission’s goals remain unchanged, he said.

“We want early childhood education, period,” he said. “We want it for all 3- and 4-year-olds, for every kid in the community, then every kid in the region.”

The district still wants to get there, too, said Jerry Kitzi, the district’s director of early learning. And it wants the commission to remain its partner, championing the campaign.

What the district does will depend on the response it gets from some planned polling of the community.

But it is considering seeking a smaller levy increase, perhaps 40 cents, that the district would control. It would raise some $11 million and, after charter schools carve off their share, leave $6.7 million for early childhood.

The plan would target serving all 4-year-olds, with a rating system to include private programs, and even funding to help centers meet the rating system’s standards. They could all share in training programs.

The district could boost its pre-K enrollment from 1,100 to 1,400, and community and charter programs would be backed to serve 1,000 more.

The smaller expansion would help the community build its teaching capacity, Kitzi said. Keeping the levy in the district’s control would eliminate the need for legislation that might never get passed.

One of the main questions for the polling will test the community’s willingness to pass a levy for the Kansas City school district — something that hasn’t happened in four decades.

The last time the district opened universal pre-K was in 2007 and 2008 when then-Superintendent Anthony Amato used an influx of temporary federal stimulus dollars to do it all in district buildings.

Community centers lost teachers and students, and some went out of business. Brown’s Luv Does Matter saw her 4-year-old class enrollment drop from 15 to four.

This time, the district is keeping the early learning community’s trust, said Deidre Anderson, who directs the St. Mark Child and Family Development Center just east of downtown.

“It seems we’re right on the cusp of some things,” she said, “if we can figure out how we’re going to do it.”

Amendment 3

The area community and business leaders behind the origin of Amendment 3 had bigger — statewide — ambitions.

The members of the Alliance for Childhood Education worried about the strength of the future workforce, and they didn’t want to wait around for state or federal investments in early childhood education that might never come.

An increase in Missouri’s lowest-in-the-nation tobacco tax seemed like a ripe target.

The Raise Your Hand for Kids campaign spent more than two years crisscrossing the state in community meetings and conducting surveys to develop its strategy.

Then the measure fell into an unexpected tug-of-war — opposed by many of the health and child organizations it had courted, and supported by Big Tobacco.

“We tried to play by the rules,” said Linda Rallo, director of the campaign. “I’ve never felt so marginalized as citizens.”

Key organizations like the American Cancer Society and the Health Care Foundation of Greater Kansas City thought the amount of increase sought on the ballot was too small. They argued it wouldn’t slow smoking and would chill any future attempt at a larger tax.

The campaign’s retort — that polling showed 60 cents was the highest increase that Missourians would pass — didn’t sway. The campaign couldn’t find enough funding support.

So it made a deal.

The campaign included language in the ballot measure that would impose an additional “equity” fee on the cheaper, non-name-brand cigarettes that remain exempted in Missouri from the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement that settled Medicaid lawsuits against the tobacco industry.

Big Tobacco became the Amendment 3 campaign’s biggest funder.

Further complicating the issue is that the smaller tobacco companies, in fighting against Amendment 3, put their own measure on the ballot — Proposition A — which proposes a 23-cent tax increase for state transportation projects.

It includes a “poison pill” provision stating that if any entity in the future were to seek another tobacco tax increase, the 23-cent tax would disappear.

“Follow the money,” said Stacy Reliford, a spokesperson for the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, in stating the opposition against the tobacco-funded measures.

Supporters of Amendment 3 are trying to remind voters that the higher price on cigarettes would generate millions, all going to children’s programs and smoking cessation efforts.

“I hope people see the effort for early childhood education and avoid the toxic politics that have enveloped this,” said Kansas City attorney David Oliver, a board member at the Alliance for Childhood Education. “This has nothing to do with the trigger issues that got everyone worked up.”

Meanwhile, the children at Luv Does Matter make their daily pledges, hands raised, promising “to learn and play … not to hate or tease, to say, ‘Yes ma’am,’ ‘thank you’ and ‘please.’ ”

Brown, her staff and the families they serve wait out the promises others have made, she said, and “still, we keep at it.”

This story was originally published October 31, 2016 at 6:30 AM with the headline "Promise of universal prekindergarten in KC struggles with politics, money."