FreedomWorks Grassroots Effort Helps Defeat Universal Preschool Bill in Vermont

MONTPELLIER, Vt., March 3. FreedomWorks Vermont played a critical role in defeating Senate Bill 132. Instead, the Education committee voted to “study” the issue some more… until January 2007.

FreedomWorks-Vermont State Director, Rob Roper commented, “This is a good first step. I’m excited by the level of grassroots activity we were able to generate state-wide. We were able to alert private childcare providers of the dangers this bill posed to their businesses, and inform taxpayers about the true costs of these programs. By getting all these folks informed and involved, we had an impact. Our membership should be very proud of what they helped to accomplish.”

FreedomWorks-Vermont objects to universal, taxpayer funded public preschool programs for three reasons: 1) Vermont property taxpayers cannot afford to subsidize two more grades of public school, 2) these programs threaten 400-500 small childcare businesses that are already providing these services, and 3) there is no evidence that government run, taxpayer funded pre-k programs are of any long term benefit to the children they are supposed to serve. In fact, based on outcomes in Georgia and Oklahoma where U-Pre-K has existed since the mid to late 90’s, testing shows the opposite to be true.

Vermonters are just beginning to understand this public school push for Universal Preschool – and they don’t want it! The State Board of Education’s ad hoc committee on early education recommend AGAINST U-Pre-K as a policy Vermont should pursue. The full Board candidly admitted that it did not know enough about U- Pre-K to make an informed policy decision, raising unanswered questions about costs, effectiveness, participation levels, and logistics. We’re learning more every day from other states and other countries that do provide U-Pre-K that these programs are both prohibitively expensive and don’t help the children they are set up to serve.

“It’s a lose/lose proposition for kids and taxpayers,” said Roper. “Citizens are just beginning catch on. Stopping S.132 is a good first step, but there is more to the issue than this one bill. The next question we have to ask is, why, given a lack of legislation, are taxpayers still paying for U-Pre-K programs that exist, as Senator Susan Bartlett put it so slickly, ‘in practice, but not in statute.'”