Sarah Mueller
The House sponsor of legislation making sweeping changes to pre-Kindergarten education is urging the Senate to take action on it.
Rep. Erin Grall’s bill (HB 1013) appears to be on life support in the waning days of Session. Co-sponsor Rep. Vance Aloupis asked House members to plead with Senators to vote on the legislation, referencing the many children in the state-funded program who are assessed as not being ready for kindergarten each year.
“If we do not get this bill to the Governor’s desk, we will need to look at those 86,000 kids … and we will need to apologize,” he said.
The House passed the legislation unanimously on Monday and passed it to the Senate through messages. The Senate companion bill (SB 1688), sponsored by Sen. Gayle Harrell, failed to advance out of the Appropriations Committee.
Senate President Bill Galvano has said the outlook for bills that have not advanced out of committee is not good.
“If we have bills stuck in committees … there’s very little chance we’ll get back to them,” he said. “I’m sure there are some good ideas in that bill but everything can’t get done in one year.”
Nothing’s dead really until Session adjourns, but bills are expected to have just through Friday to get a vote. House and Senate leadership expect a budget vote on Wednesday, after a three-day cooling off period.
Grall’s measure would make significant changes to School Readiness and Voluntary Pre-Kindergarten Program, which is offered for free to all 4-year-olds for three hours a day.
It would implement stricter statewide standards on providers, which are mostly private pre-K centers. It would create a new assessment test to measure student progress from kindergarten through third grade and identify learning disabilities.
The bill would establish a rating system, from “unsatisfactory” to “excellent,” for parents to use when choosing a preschool. Opposition to the original A-F grading system was able to squash the idea. It would also boost funding to the highest-rated programs.
Under the measure, centers that don’t meet minimum standards would have to implement an improvement plan and if they don’t improve, they could be removed from the state-funded program for two to up to five years.
