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Mayor promotes $50 million program as part of crime-fighting initiative.
The city of Indianapolis has joined the ranks of other major American cities trying to expand preschool options for local children. In an announcement on Tuesday, Mayor Greg Ballard unveiled a $50 million public-private partnership plan to give 1,300 low-income 4-year-olds access to preschool.
As many cities and states consider or act on plans to make preschool available to all children, Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard’s plan is more targeted and has been promoted as part of a multi-pronged crime-prevention initiative.
“We, as society, can no longer keep doing the same things over and over again and expect different results,” Ballard said in a statement. “Crime in American cities is a symptom of larger societal problems. My plan will address the larger issues by investing in pre-school, helping dropouts and those expelled from school, adding more police officers and stopping the revolving door of criminals who keep committing crimes and getting re-arrested in Indy.”
The program would be managed by the United Way of Indiana.
As Indiana Chalkbeat reports, the mayor has committed $25 million in funding for the program and expects another $25 million to be raised through philanthropic and other non-public sources.
The program’s first scholarships are expected to be awarded for the 2015-16 school year.
According to Chalkbeat:
Momentum for expanding access to early education in Indiana has picked up significantly within the last year after more than a decade of relatively little meaningful change.
Still, the mayor’s office estimates that between 3,000 and 6,000 more four-year-olds could enroll in preschool if they could afford it and there were seats in quality centers in Marion County.
This spring, Seattle Mayor Ed Murray and City Council Chairman Tim Burgess announced a plan to start a demonstration project that would bring publicly funded preschool options to the city funded through a four-year property tax levy.
“High quality preschool is proven to be a game-changer that prepares our children for success in school and in life. Preschool will boost not only the children but also our city with a stronger workforce and safer neighborhoods,” Burgess said, according to the city’s announcement. “The evidence already shows us what to do; we just need to muster the will to do it.”
That plan, OK’d by the city council in June, will be voted upon by Seattle residents in November.
Since taking office earlier this year, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has made universal preschool a top priority. A New York state budget deal reached in March provides $300 million in funding for pre-kindergarten programs in the city and $40 million in programs for the rest of the state. But as The New York Times has noted, there are still major concerns about how the preschool programs will be implemented.
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