Budget Cuts Hit Florida's Youngest Students

MIAMI (CBS4) - At the Cherry Blossom Learning Center in Miami Thursday two teachers put a group of four year-olds through their academic paces, sounding out letters, learning "Q" words like quick, queen and quarterback, and singing the alphabet song.

In the coming year there may be more students and fewer teachers in pre-kindergarten centers like Cherry Blossom, due to budget cuts enacted by the legislature.  The Pre-K program is available to every four year-old whose parents want it, but class sizes have been increasing and resources dwindling after three consecutive years of cuts to the program.

This year, Pre-K takes a $30 million hit.

"We cannot continue to decrease the amount that we spend per student.  It's just a terrible thing that we're doing in Florida," said Evelio Torres, Director of the Early Education Coalition in Coral Gables.  "We're talking about economic development, and we're talking about wanting companies and families to move into Florida, but we're not going to do it by having a poor educational system, by not spending enough on education."

Pre-K programs help kids prepare to learn, prime them for kindergarten and the school years to come.  Studies show children who attend Pre-K significantly outperform those who don't.

In a column written for the Miami Herald Thursday, David Lawrence of the Children's Movement of Florida, condemned the cuts to the early childhood education program.

"How does it make any sense when we have all that research that shows that a child's most crucial brain-stimulating years are from birth to before formal school?" Lawrence asked.  "How does this make even the slightest bit of sense?"

If kids in any state could use a head start on the learning process, Florida would seem to qualify.  More than 60 percent of high school tenth graders flunked the reading FCAT this year.

Parent Nicole Costa called the Pre-K education her daughter Daniella is receiving "invaluable."

"The homework experience, doing the alphabet and the colors, provides her a better foundation overall for kindergarten, so kindergarten won't be such a hard transition for her," Costa said.

Another parent, Corey Manion, said he's concerned China, India and other nations are passing us by educationally.

"I worry that in the future we won't be able to compete on a global scale if we continue to take away from education," Manion said.

Torres, of the Early Education Coalition, said cutting education funding is short-sighted, and that funding Pre-K "saves money in the long run."

Children who don't receive a good education, Torres said, often grow to be adults on the public dole, or housed in prisons - much more expensive alternatives to reading, writing and arithmetic.