Florida’s Pre-k budget shortchanges early childhood education, critics say, just as in past years
Florida is the only state where a child’s right to a “high quality” pre-K education is constitutionally protected, yet its preschool program is one of the lowest funded in the country, and the budget hike lawmakers approved this spring won’t change that.
In 2005, when Florida’s Voluntary Prekindergarten Program launched, it paid childcare centers $4.62 an hour per child, or a total of $2,500. The budget for the upcoming school year is just $1 an hour more, which is far behind the rate of inflation.
“I guess you could be optimistic and say, ‘every little bit helps.’ But in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t equate to very much,” said Timothy Davis, owner of Park Avenue Daycare, whose three preschools in Apopka and Sanford offer the state program.
Davis and others say there is not enough state money to pay teachers much more than minimum wage, nor keep up with rising operating costs.
Childcare centers that serve more affluent families are able to boost their pre-K budgets by charging families additional fees. But those serving lower-income families have fewer options as parents cannot afford many extra costs.
“I often wonder why there hasn’t been a lawsuit against the state of Florida saying that children are being denied their constitutional right,” said Steven Barnett, senior co-director of the National Institute of Early Childhood Education Research at Rutgers University.
Barnett believes the quality of Florida’s pre-K program, dubbed VPK, is limited because the state only funds three-hours of education a day and its teachers are not required to have bachelor’s degrees. He wants Florida to require pre-K teachers to have four-year degrees and raise the program’s budget to $13,326 per child, close to the investment it makes in kindergarteners.
That way, they could align pre-K teacher salaries — who on average make less than $30,000 — with kindergarten instructors, who, like other teachers, start out at nearly $50,000 a year in both Orange and Osceola counties.
Amanda Kelkenberg, CEO of the Early Learning Coalition of Osceola County, which helps oversee the pre-K program, said that despite funding worries, Florida’s program does help young students.
Last year, 64% of kindergarteners who attended state-funded pre-K passed the state’s kindergarten readiness assessment, compared to only 36% of those who did not.
In 2002, Florida voters passed a constitutional amendment requiring a free “high-quality” pre-K education be available to all 4-year-olds. In the program’s inaugural year, it served about 106,000 children, most of them in private preschools and childcare centers with contracts to offer the state program. Last year, there were more than 155,000 enrolled.
Funding was mostly flat for years and actually dipped to $2,486 per child in 2021, $14 less than the $2,500 given the year the program started. It is only in the last three years that Florida’s pre-K budget got a boost to over $3,000 per child.
But when adjusted for inflation, $2,500 in 2005 equates to more than $4,000 today. So, in real dollars, funding for Florida’s pre-K is lower today than what it was at the program’s start.
Yvette Mendez, who owns two preschools in Osceola County with an enrollment of more than 200 pre-K students, said the most she can afford to pay entry-level teachers is $13.50 an hour, or just 50 cents above Florida’s minimum wage.
“They could go over to Publix and make more money,” Mendez said.
By 2026, the state’s minimum wage is set to climb to $15 an hour, close to what Mendez pays her senior instructors now. When that happens, she fears she will have to raise her tuition. But she mostly serves low-income families and worries about their ability to weather a rate increase.
“I don’t see how anybody who’s trying to get by on what the state pays could have a stable staff,” Barnett said.
Davis faces the same problems at his centers in Orange and Seminole counties.
“At the very least, the budget needs to be doubled. That’ll give me a more qualified teacher, because I’d be able to pay over $20 an hour,” he said.
Madeleine Thakur, CEO of The Children’s Movement of Florida, a group that pushed for the pre-K amendment’s passage, said in an email that Gov. Ron DeSantis has focused on investing in K-12 teacher pay.
“It is well established that the best predictor of strong outcomes for children in school is their teachers,” she wrote. “But the same level of investment has not been made in VPK, where in many communities early education teachers are lucky to make $15/hour.”
Neither Rep. Josie Tomkow, R-Polk City, nor Sen. Keith Perry, R-Gainesville, who served on key education budget committees in the Legislature this spring, responded to requests for comment about Florida’s pre-K budget.
Though state funding only pays for a three-hour pre-K program, most centers offer a full-day option, in part because they say it is needed to prepare youngsters for kindergarten. But parents must pay for those extra hours.
Mendez charges $165 a week for those extra services. Some parents qualify for the state’s subsidized childcare program, which helps cover that cost, but only if they earn no more than $46,800 a year for a family of four.
When Joan Rodriguez Collazo’s son was in pre-K at Mendez’s Heart of a Child Learning Academy in Kissimmee, he initially qualified for that extra money, which, as a single mother, she needed.
“You’re working an 8-hour day. So, not very many people can drop them off and pick them up three hours later,” Collazo said.
But when she got a modest raise, she became ineligible for the extra funding and to provide her son with a full day of service, she had to get a second job.
“I think the hardest part is that middle ground area, where you make too much money to be considered low-income but then you don’t make enough to live in a regular community or pay for your own things,” Collazo said.
Mendez and other owners say their operating costs for everything from insurance to cleaning supplies are up drastically, making the limited state funds even more difficult.
“A bottle of bleach used to be less than a dollar, it’s like four or five bucks for the same bottle,” Mendez said. “I used to pay five dollars for a box of disposable gloves, now it’s close to fourteen.”
At the Trinity Child Development Center in Orlando’s Lake Eola Heights neighborhood, parents pay $225 a week for its wraparound pre-K program, a fee the mostly well-off clientele can afford.
“What we charge enables us to provide a high-quality programming curriculum,” said executive director Patty Moser.
Trinity has more than 300 children in its state-funded pre-K program. Its teachers are paid between $19 and $21 an hour. During the Covid-19 pandemic, most parents pulled their kids out but, to help the school stay afloat, some continued paying their weekly tuition.
Moser estimated she received about $200,000 in federal Covid relief funding. But her budget was so secure, she was able to put the extra money towards teacher bonuses, upgraded classroom technology and a mental health counselor to help children, staff and parents work through some of the challenges created by the pandemic.
“I wish every center weren’t just relying on state funds, because every child deserves the same thing that we offer,” Moser said.