UNIVERSAL PRESCHOOL PLAN IS WELFARE FOR WEALTHY.

Byline: George Runner Local View

RECENTLY, Superintendent Delaine Eastin announced the results of her task force to establish ``universal preschool'' for every 3- and 4-year-old child in California. Sounds noble, right?

Superintendent Eastin seems to have forgotten that we reformed welfare last year, and our schools are experiencing an increasing crisis with school facilities.

Universal preschool causes more problems than it solves. Instead, we should concentrate on ways to help at-risk children currently lost in the system, not institutionalize new welfare programs for the wealthy.

The first and most glaring problem with this concept of ``universal preschool'' is the word universal. Universal includes children from families who make $100,000 or more. Many families in California currently have access to affordable preschools. In fact, California has almost 400,000 children, ages 2 to 5 years old, in both private and public licensed child-care centers. This does not even include the home-based day care centers or several other healthy options for young children. So why should working families struggling to survive pay taxes to fund preschool costs for the wealthy?

State-mandated ``universal preschool'' will create disincentives for private entities such as businesses and churches from establishing free or low-cost day care and preschools. It will also prevent local entities from creatively solving their unique preschool and day care problems.

Have we also forgotten that a parent is the best teacher for children, if they can provide the right experiences? Why should we assume that the state could do a better job than a loving, supportive parent?

We should learn from the difficulties we encountered with the implementation of class-size reduction. Does anyone in California honestly believe there are enough qualified teachers, school facilities, adequate space and classrooms for two additional grades? When I visit my local schools, I see portables across the school grounds, classrooms in the multipurpose room, on the school stage, in the teachers lounge. Class-size reduction is a positive program that will benefit our children; but how can current schools be expected to fit two additional grades of 20 children per class in existing locations?

According to the task force, if each preschool class had 24 children, the state would need 3,900 more classrooms and 11,700 new teachers every year for 10 years. The task force furthers estimates that it will cost $5 billion annually to administer such a program. However, we currently have difficulties in keeping up with our current school growth, let alone two new grades.

With this year's expansion of class size reduction, the state must already hire 18,000 additional teachers. Some of these teachers have little experience and often lack teaching credentials. Is it sensible to begin another new program to hire thousands of more inexperienced teachers with an obvious lack of available facilities?

The state has wasted taxpayer dollars and resources on an expensive Universal Preschool Task Force that analyzed a $5 billion project annually to help wealthy families send their children to preschool? This is welfare for the wealthy, and Californians have already spoken loudly about their desire for welfare reform.

Clearly the solution to these problems cannot be subsidizing the child care costs of wealthy parents statewide.

We should instead focus on expanding the opportunities for low-cost, quality preschool and day care for at-risk children. In fact, Gov. Pete Wilson has proposed in the 1997-98 budget $31 million dedicated to expanding state-funded preschool for low-income students. The proposal will fund all 4-year-olds currently living below the federal poverty level. This more narrow, focused approach will reach the children and families who are in need of assistance.