Candidates support preschool expansion

Fletcher, Beshear also favor higher teacher pay

As a single mother of a 4-year-old son, Melanie Hughes struggles to pay for the pre-kindergarten program he attends each day.

She works full time and her income is too high to qualify for the state's free preschool program.

"I think preschool should be available to all children, but especially working families who cannot afford it," she said. "It's hard for me to believe that I make too much money in order to qualify for free preschool when I have to rotate my bills each month."

The two candidates for Kentucky governor agree.

Republican Gov. Ernie Fletcher and his Democratic opponent, Steve Beshear, say Kentucky must expand pre-kindergarten and fully fund full-day kindergarten, according to a Courier-Journal interview and survey of the candidates.

They also endorse additional pay raises for teachers. And both say they have serious concerns about the state's testing system.

Where they differ is in the details.

Beshear, who said one of his biggest concerns is the "limited nature of early childhood education," wants to see the program expanded to include more children, and he promised to "create a new tax revenue" through a job program to pay for it.

But Fletcher says he worries about how the state would pay for an expanded program.

"I will not raise taxes," Beshear said, "but I am going to implement an aggressive jobs program that will stimulate our economy and create more tax revenue for the state."

Beshear also said he will do an efficiency study of state government offices that he expects will find savings of $160 million to $180 million annually. "We are going to look at everything from the kind of light bulbs we buy to where we buy gas for the state fleet," he said.

Including more children

About 36 percent of the state's 3- and 4-year-old children -- roughly 39,000 -- attended Kentucky's preschool and Head Start programs for free last year, according to the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence, a nonprofit organization of Kentucky parents and citizens working to improve education.

But an additional 16,000 children in families whose incomes are 1½ to two times the federal poverty level don't have access to high-quality preschool, said Bob Sexton, executive director of the Prichard Committee.

Beshear said he supports expanding free voluntary preschool to children ages 3 and 4 whose family income is less than twice the federal poverty level -- about $41,000 for a family of four...

This from the Courier-Journal.