Shelter Island Reporter column: Why we should care about pre-school?

In a disheartening vote on Shelter Island, the school budget was defeated by 40 votes in the first vote. 

In order to “trim,” for a second vote, cuts had to be made. Fortunately, in vote number 2, the budget resoundingly passed avoiding more draconian reductions. This is good news for the kids and the Island in general. But at the end of the day, between the first and second votes, reductions were made that are affecting real people.

The free half-day pre-school has been a godsend to young working parents of Shelter Island. Unfortunately, it is now gone. Recently, educators, parents, and concerned Islanders met to find a solution for this loss.

With this happening on our island, now is a good time to look at the value of early childhood education here and everywhere.

Let’s start with some research. In a 2023 report, “Early Childhood Education: Health, Equity, and Economics,” authors Robert Hahn and W. Steven Barnett described scientific evidence regarding pre-school for 3- and 4-year-olds. They found that good programs can reduce educational gaps, improve health, and even lead to longer life-spans. The greatest improvement was for poor children, but they found that middle-class kids benefit as well.  According to the authors, high quality pre-schools are more than just the ABC’s and counting, but support the development of the whole child — cognitive, social, emotional, and physical.

In 2022, Georgetown University reported on a 20-year research study that their experts conducted for pre-kindergarten children in Oklahoma, one of the country’s poorest states. The motivator of the study was to examine the “fade out” hypothesis that suggests that the benefits of early childhood education diminish over time. The result of the study was that not only do they not diminish, but the positive effects continue to reverberate throughout time. In fact, those students were 12%s more likely to enroll in college. Dr. Bill Gormley, co-author of the study, stated, “We saw positive effects on two-year college enrollment for white and Native American students, on four-year college enrollment for Latino students, and on both two-year and four-year college enrollment for Black students.”

Head Start, which has been around for six decades and has served nearly 40 million children from low-income and homeless families, appears to have ultimately survived the Trump administration’s chopping block despite some cuts and funding delays. This was a relief to parents and educators across the country, although nothing is certain at this time. The program, according to a recent Reuters article, focuses on establishing an educational foundation for disadvantaged children giving them the social skills needed for their future education. It also teaches early math and reading skills and provides dental, mental, and nutritional health services to children and their parents.  

The right wing Heritage Foundation has said that Head Start has “little or no long-term academic value for children.” It is unclear where they got this information, given the 60 years of positive research.

To be fair, however, one decade-long study from Vanderbilt University of poor children from Tennessee did show a “fade out” result. But this program was less “play-based” and tended to try to replicate older children’s classrooms with drills and larger classes.

Pre-K fours programs (which is generally considered the year before kindergarten) have become nearly universal. But making the argument for 3-K is more difficult. And this is why the Shelter Island school made the painful decision to remove it from the budget. In the U.S. as of 2021, only 30% of 3-year-olds were in a three’s program. However, for many families this is a critically important form of childcare. Working families cannot afford the cost of expensive nannies and many of those providers do not offer the stimulation that the little kids need.

For non-English- speaking families, pre-school improves their school readiness as well as helps the rest of the family integrate into an English-speaking world. As more and more families on Shelter Island have foreign-born parents, this is particularly relevant.

If anyone knows 3-year-olds, they will know the excitement of that age. Language explodes and real concepts begin to emerge. Kids love listening to and telling stories, they can perform rudimentary counting, and they usually demonstrate adorable senses of humor. This is where friendship begins, not the proverbial “parallel play,” but a real sense of another person to share and have fun with.

It’s not always smooth-going, as fights and tantrums can erupt, but learning to interact with other kids is critical. As my granddaughter’s “three’s” teacher used to ask the kids in the morning, “Are we going to have a thumb’s up day or a thumb’s down day?” Often it was a toss-up, but as the year progressed the thumbs-up days prevailed.

Shelter Island needs our young families. Affordable housing has been discussed extensively on the Island throughout the years and in this newspaper. If we want to maintain a volunteer fire department and EMT, young blood is necessary. But young families also have young children who need to be provided for while their parents perform the functions that make Shelter Island work.

Concerned stake-holders are meeting to find ways to fill the gap of this year’s loss. They are looking for creative solutions to help these families. But as we move forward, what every voting person in Shelter Island can do next year is to support a school budget with a 3-K Program on the first vote. Every member of our community is important — even the littlest.

Nancy Green is a social worker and member of the Shelter Island Health and Wellness Committee