Having spent the past eleven years volunteering as an elected chair of a school committee, I believe deeply in the value of preschool in preparing young minds for the challenges to come. But the results of a decade-long run-up to a proposition 2.5 override to fund our local school system was surprising, with funding passing by an unprecedentedly small majority. There were complicating factors — two years of Covid-19 driving long periods of remote learning, an active minority spreading misinformation about the need and a community struggling with limited industrial base and a difficult demographic. In the post-game (and post-recount) wrap-up we conducted, it was likely that we had relied too much on digital distribution of information and assumed too much regarding general awareness of the need.
In retrospect, in addition to appealing at an emotional level to the benefits of a local school system, a better job could have been done quantifying the school system’s value as well as the cost. Our preschool is self-funding, which can be a challenge for some young parents, but a great case can be made for the ROI of state-funding of such efforts. Timothy Barthik’s Ted Talk recapping the benefits of early learning that lead to higher skilled jobs and better salaries — the majority of which will stay in the local community– is a powerful set of talking points for our next visit with State Reps.
https://www.ted.com/talks/timothy_bartik_the_economic_case_for_preschool?language=en