The rollout of universal preschool in Colorado for 38,000 kids has understandably been rocky.

But the great success of the program – providing funding for 15 hours of preschool for thousands of 4-year-olds and getting kids kindergarten-ready – is at risk of being overshadowed by the flaws in the new system.

Leaders with the state’s new Department of Early Childhood Education must act swiftly to make sure kids aren’t falling through the cracks and that enrollment for the 2024-25 school year is more equitable.

In 2020 voters approved increased tobacco and nicotine taxes to finally fund 10 hours of preschool in this state for every child a year before they attend kindergarten. Over the next two years, lawmakers built a new state department to run the program and passed laws creating rules around the program. Funding projections were optimistic and the state agreed to fund 15 hours of school for every kid and 30 hours for kids at risk of falling behind in school.

That program kicked off this fall to much fan-fare, including Gov. Jared Polis, a driving force behind the initiative, touting record numbers of kids enrolled in publicly-funded preschool programs across the state. The state opted for an online enrollment system that uses a single application for all schools with parents ranking their preference of school — regardless if it’s a private preschool center, an in-home care provider or a school-district-based program. The state then uses a lottery algorithm to assign kids to schools. Schools are funded on a per-pupil basis.

But while all of that is sound in theory, in practice, preschools are sounding alarm bells about under-enrollment, equity concerns, disabled children unable to get services, and a funding shortfall that could mean insolvency for small providers.

Leaders in school districts and private preschools are skeptical the state will ever make up that loss, despite assurances that the state will find funding to do so this year.

Mat Aubuchon, the director of learning services for Westminster Public Schools, estimated his district will fall $2 million short this year because about 50 students attending full-day school, because they have special needs or qualifying risk factors, don’t actually qualify for the extended school day under the state’s algorithm.

“The shortfall is happening all over the state. It just depends to what degree,” Aubuchon said.

Universal preschool is being described by these school leaders as the “largest unfunded mandate” schools have ever had. Because money is not going through the school finance formula, which allocates more money to rural schools, some schools are actually seeing a decrease in funding compared to prior years.

Betsy Nachand, who runs a preschool called New Hope Presbyterian in Castle Rock, had the opposite experience, where the per-student tuition rate was a significant increase in funding.

“Because of that we were able to significantly raise teacher pay this year,” Nachand said, who is thrilled that the program is helping parents with the expense of preschool.

Such disparate experiences with the funding indicate that changes are needed.

“It’s working for the rich citizens who are just getting extra money to send their students to preschool that they were already going to send, but what it really is doing is creating larger gaps between the haves and have nots,” said Wendy Birhanzel, the superintendent of Harrison, a small yet urban school district on the south side of Colorado Springs. “We are going door to door trying to find families who just don’t know how to navigate this system. Nothing has changed other than the state coming in and providing (universal pre-kindergarten) and now we have less kids being educated than before.”

Harrison School District 2 might simply be on the losing end of the parental choice built into the system.

Her neighboring superintendent, Michael Gaal, who leads School District 11 in Colorado Springs, has seen increased enrollment in his preschool program. Before enrollment opened, he went from school to school to find space to open up pre-school classrooms that he then listed on the state’s website where parents could find schools participating in the program and rank their preferences.

“We had our portal open and ready to go with all the descriptions for every classroom weeks before the portal were open but a lot of districts, they just played late to the game,” said, who was extremely supportive of the rollout even as he critiqued the delays in student assignments.

But even Cherry Creek Public Schools has seen a decrease in enrollment with almost half of the expected preschool students not enrolled for this school year. The school district is suing the state, along with other plaintiffs including Birhanzel, to attempt to make changes to the system.

We continue to believe in the vision for Colorado’s first universal preschool program, but the rollout makes clear experts were ignored during the program’s development and implementation.

“Not only did they refuse to listen, they didn’t even want us at the table,” said Cherry Creek Superintendent Chris Smith, whose school district is the largest plaintiff in a lawsuit filed against the state’s preschool implementation. “And really the purpose for signing on, for Creek, is we just want to partner. We just want a seat at the table.”

The state should immediately convene a working group with its greatest critics and its biggest supporters to hammer out quick fixes to get more kids in seats after the holiday break and long-term fixes for the 2024-25 enrollment, which will begin in a few short months.

The plaintiffs are asking for a massive overhaul of the system including the ability for school districts or private preschool providers to enroll students directly instead of going through the state’s single portal lottery system.

We’d like to see on-site enrollment opened up before the semester ends as an emergency measure to help school districts and private preschool providers fill seats, stay solvent, and get kids ready for kindergarten. Some school leaders we spoke to hope that the transition will become permanent, however, we know a lottery system can work and that it is the most equitable way for students to access high-quality programs regardless of wealth or influence. The lottery just has to be developed and implemented correctly.

We also know from a separate and unrelated lawsuit filed by the Denver Archdiocese opposing the lottery enrollment system, that without a universal enrollment system, many preschool providers would act as gatekeepers at their schools, refusing to serve some students or cherry-picking others. The lottery system is essential to make sure the best preschool programs are available to everyone regardless of income, race, religion or sexual orientation.

But for the lottery to be successful, the Department of Early Childhood Education must listen to providers who are having significant problems this year. It is clear that school districts and some providers were intentionally left out of the process of building the new system. It’s a baffling decision that we think stems from a desire to silence critics rather than to work with them.

The system has fallen short in extremely basic ways – for example, the online registration system for preschool was only available in two languages Spanish and English and communications from the new Colorado Department of Early Childhood education was only in English, including crucial information about how a parent had to “accept” their child’s placement by the Thursday after a match was made. The website now appears to also offer Arabic.

“We have 150 languages spoken in the Cherry Creek District,” Chris Smith said.

That is the simplest and easiest fix of the many problems school districts, private providers, and experts in school funding brought to The Denver Post in a heated editorial board meeting that lasted more than an hour.

Gov. Jared Polis has done well to bring this state a much-needed universal preschool program, but his accomplishment could be overshadowed if the state isn’t willing to listen to critics and prioritize at-risk students enrolled in quality programs. Colorado’s most at-risk students – children living in poverty or who are still learning English, or those with developmental disabilities or who are living in foster care – are the ones most in need of state-funded preschool.

Early childhood education is proven to be the most effective way of leveling the playing field for children and it’s one of the reasons this board supported Proposition EE to tax nicotine and increase the tobacco tax to fully fund preschool for every student in this state. Now we just have to get the implementation right.

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