Pre-K the wrong way would not do the right thing for our children

If you’ve attended one of Mayor Sly James’ pre-kindergarten tax campaign forums, you’ve seen fancy Powerpoint presentations and promotional videos, all of which go into great detail pointing out the merits of early education. We applaud them for doing a great job in educating the community on the importance of early learning and the positive impact that it can have on a child’s life. However, what you haven’t heard James and his supporters talk much about in their hyperbolic commentary, or seen illustrated in their slides, are these very important facts:

▪ The 14 school districts that don’t support the mayor’s tax increase currently provide pre-K programs for 3- and 4-year-olds, and they have expansion of early childhood education in their comprehensive strategic plans.

▪ The tax is estimated to provide only about 700 new seats per year for the next three years. The school districts are committed to adding approximately 780 new seats next year and an average of 620 seats each year thereafter, without an inequitable and regressive sales tax.

▪ In the mayor’s plan, $21 million a year for the next 3 years ($63 million) would be spent on administrative overhead to manage an $84 million fund, leaving only 25 percent of the approximately $30 million for direct services to 4-year-old children.

▪ The mayor’s tax is regressive, which means that it would take a larger percentage of income from low-income families than from those in higher-income brackets, and would thereby disproportionately impact the least able to pay: low wage earners and the elderly.

▪ The administrative process, which adds an additional layer of bureaucracy to a governance structure that, by state statute, was designed for economic development, not education, is problematic. Under the mayor’s plan, the Mid-America Regional Council would be paid from the tax to administer the fund. They will make funding recommendations to the five-member mayor-appointed pre-K tax commission (similar in structure to the Tax Increment Financing Commission), which would, in-turn, make recommendations to the City Council for final approval.

We should be very concerned about taking the state-mandated responsibility for educating our students out of the hands of locally-elected school boards and placing it in the hands of a city government that has been woefully inept at providing basic services such as trash removal, repairing potholes, preventing illegal dumping, abating blight and arresting criminals.

We should be very concerned about imposing a substantial regressive tax increase under the guise that it will provide universal pre-K, when in fact it is not pre-K for all. It is pre-K for some, but we all have to pay for it.

We should be very concerned about raising a regressive sales tax that falls short of generating enough revenue to provide pre-K for all children. Without sufficient funds to go around, who gets served first? There is nothing in the mayor’s plan that guarantees that families with the greatest need would get priority treatment. If history is prologue, our most vulnerable children and families would be left behind.

The mayor’s pre-K tax would hurt poor families. The cumbersome, convoluted governance structure controlled by city officials is fundamentally flawed and not conducive to implementation of a quality educational delivery system. $63 million over three years is too much administrative overhead to pay to build an inadequate system that does not meet the early education needs of all 4-year-olds in Kansas City.

I support pre-K, but not this way.