Quinn ed plan only digging deeper hole

In Governor Quinn’s state-of-the-state he suggested expanding the state’s early childhood education program. Are you kidding me? In case they actually try this, we should be armed with a few facts.

A neighbor who has worked as a part-time preschool teacher at the Wheaton Park District told me the number of preschool participants in the park district program, as well as private preschool programs, is way down because our public schools now offer pre-K, which is “free” for many students. As a result the park district has less staff, and staff working fewer hours. She also told me that the park district staff is paid about $12 an hour with no benefits.

I decided to look up my local school district. I downloaded the Wheaton Warrenville Unit District 200 database for 2010 from family taxpayer foundation. There are 14 teachers listed as “Early Childhood (Self-Contained pre-K).” Three have Baccalaureate, 11 have Masters. Highest salary is $92,473. One is only half-days and half-year; the rest are full-time for 10 months. If I treat the sum of those two part-timers as one full time position, the mean salary is $64,903. This does not count administrators in the school.

If you take the average year pay, $64,903, and assume 180 days per year at 8 hours per day, that comes out to $45 per hour plus benefits (pension and health care), which is far better than the park district.

By offering preschool in the school district we are paying teachers about 4 times more than we were paying for park district preschool. Are we taxpayers getting our money worth? Are the students better prepared for kindergarten now compared to prior to this state program?

“Investing” more money in it, as Quinn suggested, would simply be digging our financial hole deeper.

Jan Shaw

Wheaton