SC leaders pushed free pre-K option for needy families. But it’s not available everywhere
In a classroom at the end of the hallway inside Columbia’s Seven Oaks Kids Academy, 4-year-old Raelyn Tyler learned the alphabet, colors, numbers and how to use scissors. She learned how to interact with her classmates, about their backgrounds and how to be empathetic. Before the year ended, she gave her teacher a drawing showing her favorite part about pre-kindergarten.
“It’s very important because it gives her a head start instead of starting out not knowing anything,” said Saddeaira Tyler, Raelyn’s mother. “It gives her a little bit of a boost.”
The classroom activities are part of the academy’s 4-year-old kindergarten class this past school year, a private program coordinated by South Carolina First Steps that gets tuition reimbursement from the state. Students, a mix of those whose parents pay private or get free tuition, had spent the better part of the year preparing to enter kindergarten.
Before this year, South Carolina lawmakers had been working to get more parents around the state like Tyler to sign their child up for the program, but limited resources only allowed for gradual increases. Gov. Henry McMaster even backed the proposal, pushing to grow the initiative in his first term through his executive budgets for lawmakers to consider.
Now, after state lawmakers included nearly $34 million in this year’s budget to expand needs-based 4-year-old kindergarten, the state Department of Education and First Steps are looking to expand the program in public and private schools to ensure that the classes are available in every county in South Carolina.
The state’s education department has enough money this year to add more school districts to start up programs, and First Steps was able to recruit more private child care providers to get them approved.
But the program lacks enough providers in every county to administer the program — what the education department and First Steps are working to solve.
And even with a significant spike in outreach, education leaders fear that full expansion of the program may take three years to fully achieve the state’s statewide goal.
“Will I be testifying before the Legislature next year? Will they be saying, ‘Have you spent all the funds?’ I’m going to have to say to them, ‘No, it was the first year, we didn’t spend all the funds,’“ said Georgia Mjartan, executive director of First Steps.
Mjartan said should lawmakers ask whether they tried to get students enrolled and providers online, she’d tell them, “absolutely.”
”That’s our job,’” Mjartan said. “It’s an expectation we want to live up to and at the same time to fully acknowledge it’s going to take a few years to full deployment of those funds.”
The need for providers, families
Before the upcoming school year, 20 of the state’s 81 school districts did not offer the state-funded program, including Richland 2, Charleston, Lexington 1, Lexington-Richland 5 and the state’s charter school districts.
Starting this school year, every district in the state will offer some sort of 4K program. But the 4K program will start with a shortage of providers, despite an increased state investment, and the program’s organizers are still working to attract enough families.
Currently, First Steps has 253 private school providers, with a total of 295 classrooms. Each classroom holds 10 to 20 students.
But First Steps still has yet to secure private providers in each of the 46 counties. As of Wednesday, First Steps said they’re still without providers in Abbeville, Calhoun, Clarendon, Edgefield and McCormick counties. Twelve counties have only one provider.
“Having quality centers in those deserts is still a problem,” said Martha Strickland, First Steps’ 4K state director, who said it can take four to six months just to get a provider fully trained and licensed once a provider has been found.
Another program problem is finding enough families to fill slots.
Several school districts run their own 4K programs without state money, allowing them to accept more students, which then allows the additional 4K state funds to be used in other districts, said Ryan Brown, spokesman for the Department of Education.
A longtime proponent of expanding 4K, former state Sen. Vincent Sheheen, D-Kershaw, said First Steps and public schools face the challenge of having enough physical space for students and finding teachers, a particular challenge on the private side.
“If you had every kid who was eligible show up for 4K, you would not have enough space in the public sphere in many of these counties. And on the private side, it’s finding actual participants with high-quality teachers to participate,” Sheheen said. “First Steps is truly going to have to go out there and help especially in neighborhoods that don’t have a history of it, (and) help providers get started.”
Another challenge is making sure schools have the teachers to fill the new openings, but that’s a problem statewide during the COVID-19 pandemic, Brown said.
“We’re having a hard enough time finding teachers to fill the current number of regular teaching positions,” Brown said. “Finding qualified individuals is an issue pre-K-12.”
With more spots to fill and an ongoing search to find potential places to hold classes, First Steps is aggressively promoting the program through Facebook, radio advertisements, webinars with potential providers, along with in-person community outreach and news releases in order to reach potential families.
“We‘ve stepped up our targeted outreach in communities where we’re lacking providers, even going so far as to help create child care centers where there aren’t any,” said Georgia Mjartan, executive director of First Steps.
But families may also be picky about where they send their children as parents will want a high-quality program but near work and some place that also can watch their infant, Mjartan said. That could create waiting lists at some locations and available spots at others.
“It’s going to be both and that’s one reason why we’re encouraging families to not wait until the 11th hour to sign up,” Mjartan said.
Expansion to take three years
In preparation for next year, 2,690 students out of 2,864 applications have been approved for First Steps 4K tuition, an 83% increase of submitted and approved student applications from this point in time last year, the agency said.
If First Steps spent every dollar it was given by the state, it would be able to serve 6,045 4-year-old kindergarten students.
But the pandemic resulted in an enrollment drop in private and public schools, a dilemma some worry may come into play again as COVID-19 cases rise because of the delta variant.
“We have no idea given what we’re finding out now about the delta variant,” Mjartan said. “Given the fact that children in this age group can’t be vaccinated, we have no idea what parents will choose.”
Brown said the expansion allows for an additional 350 public school 4K classrooms, on top of the 626 classrooms in the 2019-20 school year. As of Friday, the education department expects to have 729 4-year-old kindergarten classrooms in the upcoming school year.
The pandemic also resulted in an enrollment dip in public schools, a drop to 8,400 students from about 10,000 to 11,000.
This year, Brown said they’re expecting between 11,000 and 14,000 students.
“The goal is to make both the public and private across the state, make them high quality and let people choose from which one they want and not let there be a difference in what is offered. Obviously that is easier said than done,” said Brown said, who anticipates enrollment to go up when the pandemic significantly winds down. “We’ll see a bump, but it’s not going to be that big of a bump this year.”
This story was originally published August 9, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
