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Police accuse bank robbery suspect of gobbling up note (with dashcam video)
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Will Health Care Reform Pass?
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Silverdome Potentially SOLD!
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Colloquium at University of Akron
Akron Gamer:
Nintendo's Mario endures even as games come and go
What happened to the worthy cause of advancing early education?
Published on Sunday, May 03, 2009
An advocate of this long view of education, Ted Strickland has led with such budget proposals as universal all-day kindergarten and for proceeding with plans to consolidate all state-funded early childhood programs, from education to health and child care, in a Cabinet-level office. The sense has been that at last Ohio is getting serious about the ''P'' end of the education continuum, especially for low-income toddlers who need the attention.
The great dismay as the Statehouse crafts the budget for the next two years is that the momentum seems to have shifted into reverse. Strickland's budget slashed from 12,000 to 8,000 the number of slots available for the Early Learning Initiative, which provides high-quality education and child care. The budget approved by the House last week acquiesced.
More disheartening yet, the House budget also cut $23 million from the Early Childhood Education (public preschool) program. According to the advocacy group GroundWorks, the action would reduce by 2,100 the number of children served by the preschool program. In 2006, about one-third of the children entering kindergarten in Ohio were unprepared. Together, these two programs reach a paltry 6 percent of Ohio's eligible 3- and 4-year-olds. Will the 94 percent be ready for kindergarten?
Get the full article here.
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