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- The effort to expand Pre-K education,
tonight on Behind the Headlines.
[dramatic orchestral music]
I'm Eric Barnes, publisher of the Memphis Daily News,
thanks for joining us.
I'm joined tonight by Mike Carpenter, Executive Director
for Tennesseans for Quality Early Education,
thanks for being here. - Thank you.
- Kathy Buckman Gibson is a board member with
Seeding Success, thank you for being here.
- Thank you.
- Kemp Conrad is with the Memphis City Council,
thanks for being here. - Thanks for having me Eric.
- And Bill Dries, senior reporter with the
Memphis Daily News.
I'll start with each of you and how you come at this effort,
and why this effort is important to you,
and then we'll get deeper into the details of what's going on,
but, maybe I'll start with you Kemp,
from the City Council point of view.
Why has this been a priority for you,
and what has been your role, and the City Council's role in
trying to expand and cover the costs and access to Pre-K.
- I think this is really going to be a defining kind of moment
in the history and trajectory of the city and the community.
About half of the children in the City of Memphis live at
or below the poverty level.
That's absolutely unacceptable.
We know now that 80% of brain development occurs before the
age of five, but we spend 80% of public education dollars in this
country after the age of five.
So everybody agrees that public investment in education is
something that we should do, but it's when do you start it?
And now we know through a lot of research and studies that
the earlier you can start, the better off that children are
and will be as they go through life.
And so that's why this is so important.
The City of Memphis got out of the education business,
we spent $60, $70 million a year previously that just
went into the school system.
We had no control over that money.
The city got out of that business about
eight, nine years ago.
But we always wanted to invest in children.
But the key was how do we do it?
And so the thought really formalized that the best way we
could do it, the biggest bang for our buck and our investment
would be to invest in Pre-K, and to be a catalyst to bring
Shelby County to the table and the School Board,
and of course the great partners at Seeding for Succes who've
played a tremendous role in this effort.
To be a catalyst to fund needs based,
universal Pre-K in the city.
And so that's kind of where we are,
the city has now done its contribution,
we have approved the ordinance--
- Yeah. And we'll... hold that for now, we'll get
into the funding side of it.
Because there's funding from a lot of different directions,
we'll come to that. You mentioned Seeding Success.
What is... you are a board member with Seeding Success.
What is Seeding Success, and why for you is it so important to
volunteer your time and energy to make this happen.
- Well, Seeding Success is a non-profit organization
in our community that really works with various partners
to look at that cradle to career system,
across that continuum to ensure that we've got
in place the systems that we need, the resources that we need
so that our people can be successful and ultimately
having productive jobs in our community.
I've gotten involved in the early childhood piece of this.
We were fortunate enough several years ago to develop
an early childhood plan, education plan.
That really covers from zero, when children are first born to
eight years of age which gets us to third grade.
And looking at that time frame in a child's life,
and ensuring that they have in place the systems,
the child care, the medical care when they first are born,
the childcare, and then education starting with Pre-K,
and then onto kindergarten and third grade,
so that they by third grade are going
to read at a third grade level, which is critically important.
- Alright. And Mike Carpenter, what,
the role of Tennesseans for Quality Early Education,
you're more focused state-wide,
but obviously your organization, you are based here in Memphis.
So talk about why this is important to you and what your
organization is doing to try to solve this problem.
- Sure, so Tennesseans for Quality Early Education,
we are a bi-partisan advocacy organization that is state wide.
We advocate for education policy from
birth through third grade, so that critical third grade year
Kathy just spoke of is the target.
And so within that continuum of birth to eight years old.
Pre-K is right there in the middle.
And so Pre-K is a very important building block for future
learning and it's, it's an important part of what
we are focused on in the state, especially
around the quality of Pre-K.
What we know from studies here of Tennessee's voluntary Pre-K
program is that Pre-K does work.
It works especially in terms of preparing children for
kindergarten, being ready for kindergarten.
Number two is we know there is inconsistent quality across the
state in terms of the quality of Pre-K programs,
so one of the things that we're very focused on is making sure
that we have quality Pre-K to offer.
And then number three is that Pre-K is not an innoculation
against anything bad happening later on in terms of education,
but it is a critical building block that we have to sustain,
so we get kids ready for school, we get them into Pre-K,
quality Pre-K, and then sustain that in kindergarten,
first, second grade, as they're reaching that
critical third grade reading mark.
- Alright, Bill Dries.
- So Kathy, walk me through the numbers here,
the immediate goal seems to be getting us to 8500
Pre-Kindergarten seats but as you've all pointed out,
this is not just about Pre-K, this is zero through eight
really that we're talking about,
so what are the financial committments that are at stake
and where are we with those committments.
- Well, and I appreciate you asking Bill,
because it is critically important.
Our most immediate issue is that we expanded our Pre-K seats
about four years ago with a federal grant that represents
about $8 million a year.
And that funds a thousand seats for our children.
That grant will expire in July of '19.
And we need the money to make sure that we don't
lose those seats.
The city will be committing $3 million of that 8 beginning
in July '19 when those funds expire.
And we need an additional $5 million
from the County Commission.
And whether it's in the form of the school budget,
or out of the general fund, or out of the surplus,
we are fortunate enough this year to have a significant
surplus, and there's opportunities to use some of
those funds to ensure that we have that full $8 million.
To get to the 8500 that you've talked about,
we need an additional $8.6 million.
And we're working, and the City has committed additional funding
that will help go towards that 16.6.
Our goal is to be fully funded at the 8500 seat level by 2022.
- And that 8500, then I'll go back to Bill,
represents your estimate or your best survey of how many kids are
out there who fall into this Pre-K category but who don't
have any other way to get into Pre-K.
- Right, who are needs based in essence.
- Needs, based. Okay. Back to Bill.
- So the private and philanthropic piece of the
fundraising, that is for the wrap-around services,
and that is for the K through three piece in terms
of grade level, am I correct on that?
- Well, as you pointed out this is a broader plan. Broader than
just Pre-K, we're looking from birth to third grade.
And what we're doing is we're asking the City and the County
to fund the Pre-K, and the K through third grade.
Which is typically who you would expect to fund
that educational piece.
We're looking to private dollars to help fund the plan before
they get to Pre-K.
So helping us raise the quality of childcare for example.
Helping ensure that there are home visitations to reach these
children when they're first born,
and help their parents ensure that they're getting
the medical care they need.
And that they understand how to care for these children in such
a way that they are best prepared when they get to Pre-K.
So we're looking for private dollars,
we've had very encouraging conversations with a number
of private donors in our community and even nationally.
But part of what they're looking for is that committment from the
City and the County.
The City has made their committment,
we're now asking the County to do so.
- Kemp, the City Council discussion on this was very
interesting because when you approached your fellow council
members about this, you said, "We need to have an agreement
on the general goal." And a lot of the discussion...
not a lot, some of the discussion was about well,
what are we doing for K through 3,
and at one point I think you said,
"We can't not let perfect be the enemy of good here."
This is a pretty complex discussion.
Even among City Council members, never mind when you throw in the
County Commission, and both mayors on this.
So what was the key to getting consensus on this
from the Council's perspective?
- Yeah I think it's something that everybody wanted to do,
and I mean there's no shortage of need out there,
but this was an immediate need.
Something that I think the City had to be at the table to be a
catalyst to get the other governmental bodies together,
and so I just think it took a lot of communication by a lot
of the stakeholders, Kathy, her team,
Mike and the team talking to people and just letting people
know that we have limited resources,
but this is where we could probably get the most bang for
the buck from the Pre-K standpoint,
so, that's why we went ahead, we got the resolution to make sure
before we spent all the work and the effort it would take to find
the funding, to at least make sure from a policy standpoint
that there were at least seven votes on the Council to get back
into the education business if you will.
And so that's why we went through with a two-step process
with the resolution.
We looked at various ways to find the money,
and of course, give a lot of recognition to the mayor and his
team for actually coming up with a mechanism that we use,
which is the lions share of the funds is just taking as PILOTs
expire, that money would typically go back into the
general fund, and we're taking a portion
of that to go into Pre-K.
- And what was the final vote, do you remember?
- I believe it was unanimous. - Yeah, yeah.
- And there were various concerns,
is it going to be high quality, and this and that,
and we worked hard to check all the boxes on those
concerns, I want to point out one thing too,
this isn't all just going to the school system
or to governenment.
Porter-Leath is a great example of an organization that's out
there that is providing a lot of these services and doing a great
job on the home visitations and the classroom.
That's where Kathy and Seeding for Success and the team come
in, in making sure that there's accountability,
their metrics that we're using, kind-of best in class service
providers and we're making sure that we're getting as much
mileage as possible out of the dollars.
- Because there's not one team that this money goes to that is
now the providers of Pre-K, it's different organizations,
am I right? Or who's... - Correct.
- Yeah, there are a number of organizations that are providing
Pre-K classrooms and it is being,
right now the oversight is from Shelby County Schools.
Porter-Leath is providing them a number of those classrooms,
but a number of those municipalities also are offering
Pre-K classrooms, Bartlett is, Millington has a classroom.
So it's a number of different organizations and even some
childcares have a Pre-K classroom
within their childcare center. - Bill.
- We should say that the County administration
has indicated that they probably will not use the method that
the City did for funding this, they have other options that
they may tap into this-- - And we shoud say too,
we are recording this a week ago from when it airs, so
there's lot's going on still. Back to Bill.
- Right. So, Mike, from the statewide perspective,
there's been quite the discussion over a number of
years about Pre-Kindergarten, and whether it is effective.
Governor Haslam, when he came in there was an immediate study
about this whole question.
What is State Government's perspective on this,
is it that, as you said Pre-Kindergarten is not an
innoculation, or is it beyond that viewpoint?
- Well I think the first thing to know is that the pot of money
that funds voluntary Pre-K in the State of Tennessee
is just under $86 million.
And has not increased in a decade.
It hasn't decreased, but it hasn't increased,
there's been no increase or expansion to provide the
services to additional children.
We're serving less than half of the eligible children right now
in the State of Tennessee.
In terms of State Government's persepctive on it,
you know it varies from legislator to legislator but in
2015 when Vanderbilt University and the Peabody Research
Institute released a study of Tennessee's voluntary Pre-K
program, the results frankly were misinterpreted.
And mis-messaged in that what the study found is what
I said in the beginning.
Pre-K in Tennessee, voluntary Pre-K does work.
The kids who had Pre-K were better prepared for
kindergarten, the children who did not have Pre-K.
What the study also found is that those kids who did not have
Pre-K, caught up with the kids who did,
and that both groups lost ground academically
in grades one and two.
And so the real question for us as an organization statewide is
what do you think happened in K, one,
and two to lose those gains, and that's why we talk about Pre-K
as an essential building block, but you have to sustain that.
So part of our work is what do we do before Pre-K as Kathy
and Kemp have both pointed out.
But also what do we do after Pre-K to make sure they
sustain those gains.
And so we're looking at quality of instruction,
working with the Department of Education in those classrooms,
we're about to launch a study that will do some observations
of classrooms to determine if we've got the right curriculum,
the right instruction, what's actually happening
in the classroom that could be causing some of those kids
to lose those gains.
- The reason I asked the question is because there was a
forum among three of the four major Republican contenders for
Governor that was televised statewide,
and three of those candidates without too much hesitation at
all; Randy Boyd, Diane Black, and Bill Lee,
each said they're opposed to universal Pre-K.
Does that make this harder?
- It does, and you know what, I would say that we didn't hear
them say that they were opposed, but I think they used the term
mixed-results was a term I heard from a couple of candidates,
and we quickly set them straight, let me say that.
We have an ongoing dialoguge
with all the gubernatorial candidates.
And we're neutral in that race, but we want to educate those
candidates and make sure that they understand the value
of early education.
And so I think that they have a better understanding
now of the issues.
But yes, we want a governor that supports Pre-K,
as well as other early learning initiatives.
But in addition to that, as the saying goes from
the legislature, I mean there's the governor proposes and the
legislature disposes, so the legislature is just as important
to this effort as the Governor is.
- Were you going to say something?
- Well I think a couple things.
I think this, I don't know that you need a one size fits all
approach to the State, which is what I think some of the folks
were saying at the debate there.
But I think this is an example of how this community has come
together to structure a program that we think is best for
Memphis and Shelby County.
Would we like to have more state funding, absolutely.
And I'll just say this.
You can talk about this study or that study,
it doesn't take a rocket scientist,
you can go look at every CEO, affluent person in Memphis that
has the means, they are sending their children
to a Pre-K program. I bet it's ninety something plus percent.
Not only a Pre-K program,
probably a three-year-old program.
- Probably, and many of the private schools in town are
doing two-year-old programs.
- Exactly, so we know this works,
it's not, it's really not even up for debate.
People say it doesn't... now if you take kids and stick them in
a corner without instruction or they're not
interacting with their peers? No, that's not going to work.
- Yeah that's-- - Quality is important.
And especially in impoverished areas,
what happens before is critically important.
I would even say it's not just zero, it's prenatal.
It's what happens to these children before they're born,
and I think a great model of what this community is going to
do now with this program is if you look back to the
infant mortality crisis we had when Governor Bredesen
was there, what happened.
The community got together, they put things in place,
and we're doing a lot better there.
And because of that, these children that are born healthier
will do better in school because of that brain development,
because it doesn't just start when you're born.
So all these things go together, it's a continuum,
that's what we've never had.
The Pre-K is an important piece of it,
a $17 million piece, what Kathy and the team are working on,
it's a $40 million investment, and I think when we look back in
ten years, we will look back and say this is the point where
where Memphis and Shelby County really changed
because this is an investment,
it's the best anti-crime investment you can make,
it's the best economic development investment
you can make.
And for every dollar we invest here,
the dividend is $7 to $15 down the road.
- It's interesting, and Bill mentioned the debate,
which I was a part of, and I saw you after and I talked,
you are a Republican and you spoke,
how do you reconcile, I don't want to get political,
but it's just interesting to hear you talk about that very
passionately, and about the role that government plays with these
families and these children. Is that not...
I mean to be simplistic, government overreach?
How do you reconcile your obvious conservative values
on a lot of issues with the need for governement
to be so involved in this particular issue.
- I think part of it is an education issue.
Again, I think they're talking about
the whole state of Tennessee.
I'm not running for Governor, I haven't analyzed the whole state
of Tennessee, and what the whole state of Tennessee needs,
I think I know what Memphis and Shelby County needs,
and I think that if one of those fine people get elected,
and I think that they will, I think that the work of Kathy,
and Mike, and other key stakeholders,
hopefully they will come to see the importance of high quality
Pre-K for people that want to do it.
- (Eric) We've got seven minutes left.
- Because you can't debate it. - Yeah. Kathy.
- I think one thing that's important is to recognize is
that here in Shelby County we have the numbers to show
that it's working. Last year in the fall of
2017 when our children went to kindergarten, we had increased
the number of children that were ready for kindergarten by 10%.
By ten percentage points. That's significant.
For one year, from fall of 2016 to fall of 2017, it's working.
Those children are going to kindergarten
better prepared to learn.
And that's what's critical is, again, the building block.
I think that you can look across the state,
there may be a lot of different issues.
We have really been focused over the last four years,
not just on expanding the number of seats,
but improving the quality.
And that's what becomes critical is ensuring that those are
quality classrooms, and that the monies that are
being invested are being used wisely.
And I feel confident that they are.
More work to be done, no question. But--
- It was funny, to go on your website,
the Seeding Success website, you see the word data about 20 times
in the first 30 seconds you're on there. Is that...
Some of the ways in which you're trying to measure the success,
you just talked about 10%, and is it short term,
medium term, long term?
How do you track what's working and what's not?
- Well we are, we're tracking obviously the short term,
year-over-year gains in terms of kindergarten readiness,
third grade reading level, math scores, etcetera.
So we've got a number of different metrics that we're
using to track how well we're doing,
particularly at that third grade level,
and then actually Seeding Success goes all the way
through the career piece.
But we're starting to now be able to track back about four
years in terms of looking at those children,
and how have they progressed, in terms of were they in Pre-K,
or not in Pre-K, how are they now doing in third grade.
So we've got the data, and that's a key part of what
Seeding Success is about, is ensuring that we track the data,
that we analyze that data, that we hold ourselves accountable
for how well we're doing or not, and that we use that data to
help make corrections where we need to go in
and change things and improve things.
- Someone mentioned this, and I'll go to you Mike,
that the idea of home visitation,
particularly in under served, very needy communities,
and that that funding was expanded in this last session
from $2 million to about $3.5 million or something,
you can correct me on that. What is home visitation,
what's the role of that, what does that mean?
- Well, so home visitation has a number of different models.
Some models focus on expectant mothers,
and making sure that they get to their prenatal appointments and
then helping them right after the child is born with knowing
how to care for that child properly,
and what kinds of things to do with that child,
as Kemp pointed out, 80% of brain development,
zero to five, and so that's important.
Other home visiting programs look at families that are
at-risk for either child abuse, child neglect,
substance abuse, and go in and work with those families.
There are trained nurses, there are social workers
who typically go in, so there are a number of different models
around the state, but what we know is that
evidence based home visiting works.
That it makes a change in the lives of families and children
that are at risk or in need.
So this additional funding that the governor provided in his
budget, and then we were successful, TQE
and our coalition was successful in passing a budget amendment,
an additional $1.4 million to raise home visiting funding from
the state back to 2012 levels.
- And just briefly in what is a very conservative legislature,
skeptical of the role of governement,
is that a hard fight to convince them that government has that
role in the intimacy of people's lives.
Is there pushback on that issue?
- Actually it wasn't, and I'll tell you what's really
remarkable about the legislature at this point,
is there is still a lot of different ideology on both ends
of the spectrum, conservative and liberal, but
around this issue of ACEs, or Adverse Childhood Experiences,
childhood trauma, there is really some
bi-partisanship in the legislature around that issue
and the importance of addressing that,
and home visiting is one of those ways and so when you frame
it in those terms, especially with the opioid crisis,
and poverty in places like Memphis,
legislators on both sides of the aisle are starting to get that,
and so anytime you ask for additional funding it's hard.
But in terms of being supportive of the concept,
majority of legislature is clearly supportive of that.
- Just two minutes left, Bill.
- And Kathy your point in this is that what happens away from
wherever Pre-K happens, involves the whole family.
- It does. It has to.
When you start understanding the lives of these families,
you recognize that it's not just about the child,
it's about that whole family, and whatever is going on in
their lives, and that's why it's so important to recognize that
with the United Way efforts to,
Driving the Dream out of Poverty,
the women's foundation's efforts in terms of addressing poverty
in 38126, all of these efforts are designed to really look
at that whole family and the two-generational approach
of how do we really lift these families out of poverty.
And that is a key part of what we're doing.
With the Pre-K seats that we've added,
and that we currently have, every Pre-K classroom now has a
counselor to help those families make sure that they have access
to various services that they're entitled to.
- Like I said to, this isn't just a big government program,
government trying to do it all,
is government investing in this, yes. What are we investing in?
Best in class groups that are out there,
the non-profit world, the faith community,
non-profit community, private foundations,
so this is everybody at the table,
government should definitely be at the table,
but government isn't doing it all,
this is bringing everybody together,
the city, the county, the school board,
which is what we need more of in this town,
and bringing all the different stakeholders
together to bear on this issue.
And I just want to make sure that's clear,
because I think that's one of the things that you know
sometimes people are, "Oh, this is just big government,
and big governmnent doing this and that." No.
Government is at the table, but so is everybody else.
- And where, I don't know who to point this to,
where is federal funding in this mix,
and we're two years into the Trump Administration,
do I look to you?
What part does federal funding play in this?
- We were successful in getting this federal grant several years
ago that allowed us to expand and add an additional thousand
seats, that grant expires in July of '19,
and we have no anticipation of being able to access additional
federal funds under this administration.
So it's important that we look for those funds locally.
- Ten seconds.
- We talk a lot about third grade reading level,
and why that's so important.
Until third grade you learn to read,
but once you hit third grade you read to learn,
and so our goal is 90% of children reading at third grade
level by 2025, and if we do that the future of this community is
even brighter than it is today.
- Alright, we end on that note.
Thank you all for being here, and thank you for joining us,
join us again next week.
[dramatic orchestral music]
[acoustic guitar chords]
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