Posted on September 7, 2024
ACNJ recommends a taskforce to evaluate New Jersey's public preschool system and expansion.
TO: Members of the New Jersey State Board of Education
FROM: Shadaya Bennett, Senior Legislative Analyst, Advocates for Children of New Jersey
DATE: September 4, 2024
RE: New Jersey’s Public Preschool System
Advocates for Children of New Jersey (ACNJ) appreciates the opportunity to provide comments on New Jersey’s public education system as it relates to the well-being and success of our youngest residents. ACNJ is committed to ensuring that all children have access to high-quality education in safe and enriching environments as their fundamental right. We aim to ensure that systems serving children uphold standards that support healthy development and provide pathways to academic, economic, and social success.
New Jersey prides itself in being ranked among the top states for public education, a distinction closely tied to our substantial investment in the education system. Such investments demonstrate a collective commitment to providing quality education to students statewide. However, it is not just about the amount we invest but also how resources are utilized. To truly uphold our educational standards, we must ensure that investments are strategic to prevent inequities and avoid adversely impacting our educational ecosystem, including early childhood education.
As the state invests in expanding access to free public preschool, ACNJ emphasizes the need for a robust system that supports the entire continuum of care and education for all children. Quality early childhood education is essential for brain development and preparation for K-12 education. While we fully support universal pre-K, we also recognize that the current expansion process has created unintended consequences that affect our already fragile child care system. Therefore, New Jersey must strategically expand public preschool while ensuring the sustainability of the child care infrastructure. This approach will prevent reduced availability of infant and toddler care, which could lead to child care center closures and restricted access for working families. Such consequences would not only impact private provider programs, staff, and the families they serve but also other vital systems that serve our society, such as the K-12 system.
We must recognize the interconnection between the child care system and the K-12 education system, both of which play vital roles in developing and educating our children. Child care not only lays the foundation for early learning but also serves as a critical support system for the K-12 workforce, where women make up roughly eighty percent of public-school teachers. Educators, administrators, and school staff rely on accessible child care for their own children which enables them to fulfill their professional responsibilities. This exemplifies the need for collaboration between these systems, particularly where their roles intersect—such as in early childhood education. For New Jersey, this means our public preschool system and what that looks like for our broader educational continuum. The success and sustainability of these systems depend on their mutual support, making it imperative that they function as complementary pillars within a comprehensive educational strategy.
To address structural issues within our public preschool system, we recommend that New Jersey adopt a strong, well-conceived mixed-delivery system. This means the provision of public preschool across multiple educational settings and includes fostering collaboration between school districts and private child care providers, utilizing the framework and benefits of the existing infrastructure, and would support equitable access for all children and families. As an initial step towards establishing such a system, which is also endorsed in the State Fiscal Year 2025 Budget, we propose creating a task force to evaluate the landscape of the public preschool system and the expansion process. This task force should assess the benefits of partnership between school districts and private providers and would serve as a practical step towards improving the current system.
The task force could examine several key areas including:
- Barriers to collaboration between districts and private providers, such as facility standards which limit opportunities for private providers because of differing space requirements for serving three and four-year olds in public preschool versus serving the same population in private child care settings.
- The system by which school districts and private providers contract to deliver public preschool. Private providers are often left at a financial disadvantage because they are bound to contracts that are limited to one-year. This hinders their ability to secure financial support for essential long-term investments and does not provide any assurance of continued collaboration beyond the current school year. Multiyear contracts would promote stability, equity, and sustained quality in early childhood education.
- The funding mechanisms used by districts to allocate funds to private providers partnering for public preschool. Statewide, participating providers experience funding cuts if they fail to meet enrollment targets for public preschool slots. In contrast, districts receive state funding for a set number of contracted slots, regardless of whether those slots are filled. This type of funding instability can negatively impact private providers, many of which are small businesses, potentially threatening their program sustainability and quality
If New Jersey is truly committed to a sustainable public preschool system for three- and four-year-olds, we must ensure that commitment is matched by strategic planning and thoughtful consideration of all factors. This includes safeguarding every system that serve young children, ensuring they are not compromised as we expand public preschool. The state's investment must be guided by a holistic approach that supports the entire early childhood education ecosystem.
Thank you for your time and consideration. Should you have any questions or need additional information, please feel free to reach me at sbennett@acnj.org.
