Wednesday, Dec. 18, 2019 | 2 a.m.
Clark County Commission Chairwoman Marilyn Kirkpatrick had a stern message in regards to how a small sales tax increase would be used toward preschool education.
“I want to have it right,” she said during Tuesday’s commission meeting. “It’s an investment and I want the public to see that this truly does make a difference with kids, but I have to be able to measure it somehow.”
The commission approved the one-eighth sales tax hike in September under Assembly Bill 309 to help subsidize education and social programs. The tax will go into effect in January and is expected to raise $54 million annually. The first allocation would be fall 2020.
On Tuesday, commissioners reviewed a list of schools in the Clark County School District labeled by need and feasibility for preschool programs. After the holidays, commissioners will come back with a selection of schools they believe need the most assistance, and which ones already have the existing infrastructure to implement new programs.
“Pre-K is so important, when you look at underserved areas,” Commissioner Lawrence Weekly said. “When you give a kid a head start, you’re addressing school-to-prison pipeline right out of the gate.”
Kirkpatrick said she wants more data from the district to show which programs do and don’t work, as well as to show whether the county’s investment will make a difference. She suggested implementing a third-party auditing service to track the information.
“The expectation for me is knowing what the different levels are so we can measure it, the classroom Clark County is investing in, and the school,” she said. “Some of these schools have other pre-K programs, and I want to know what we’re investing in and whether it’s making a difference.”
Brenda Larsen-Mitchell, the CCSD chief instructional services officer, said the ultimate goal is to have 90% of students who go through the preschool program leave ready for kindergarten. At the end of last school year, around 70% of students were meeting or exceeding expectations in literacy, she added.
Commissioners also heard a presentation from Waterford Upstart, a virtual kindergarten readiness program. The idea behind the project is to allow parents with certain barriers to provide at-home pre-kindergarten education for their children. The program was first piloted in Utah and has since been used across the country.
Claudia Miner, the program’s co-founder and executive director, said the program is not meant to replace in-person education and that it is meant to overcome barriers like transportation, geography and cost for low-income parents.
“The program has been studied extensively, and external evaluations have found that our children have two to three times the learning outcomes of other children who don’t participate,” she said.
Kirkpatrick said programs like Upstart could fill gaps in more rural areas like Sandy Valley and Mount Charleston.
“To take it a step further, I truly think that for all the cities and counties that have a preschool program, we could establish a computer lab for kids to get an additional 15-20 minutes working on it, and it would encourage parents to be more engaged,” she said.
