Gavin Newsom wants every 4-year-old in preschool. His budget has money for 10,000 of them
Gov. Gavin Newsom wants to find a way to send every California 4-year-old to preschool, but he says the state just can’t afford the cost — yet.
Newsom inches toward his big goal in the 2020-21 state budget proposal he released last week. It includes a plan to spend $31.9 million to open 10,000 additional spots for state-funded, all-day preschool. The commitment grows to $127 million in subsequent years, according to the Finance Department.
He unveiled the preschool money during a press conference detailing the first draft of his $222 billion budget. The second-year governor has promised a three-year strategy to get 30,000 eligible, low-income 4-year-olds into universal preschool in California.
His first state budget, the one that’s in effect now, opened 10,000 preschool positions for toddlers. The current state budget includes almost $2.5 billion in funding for preschool, including subsidies for low-income families and transitional kindergarten for certain 4-year-olds.
Newsom touted the proposal as part of a “parents agenda” to expand childcare, paid family leave benefits and pre-k and kindergarten programs.
“You want to support parents and families, you’ve got to support their children,” Newsom said during Friday’s nearly three-hour press conference.
His budget also allocates a $5 million to the state’s Health and Human Services Agency to identify public-private partnerships that can “fiscally sustain” preschool and childcare expansion.
The plan also would create a Department of Early Childhood Development under the health agency to “maximize” investments in high-quality programs for young, low-income children and their families.
Several lawmakers said they remain cautiously optimistic about Newsom’s proposal.
“You can’t do it overnight. You have to phase it in with more slots and more facilities and we’re doing some of those things in the budget,” said Assemblyman Kevin McCarty, a Sacramento Democrat and chair of the Assembly Subcommittee on Education Finance. “Could we always do more? Yeah. But I think this is a great start.”
McCarty is also carrying a group of early education bills this year that would expand eligibility into the state’s preschool program and change the state’s reimbursement rates for subsidized childcare.
“Four-year-olds don’t always have the high-powered lobbyists in the Capitol,” McCarty said. “Infants and toddlers, our whole zero through five landscape. There is more and more support for this. It’s been bipartisan. But California has a lot of competing interests.”
This story was originally published January 13, 2020 at 3:26 PM with the headline "Gavin Newsom wants every 4-year-old in preschool. His budget has money for 10,000 of them."