The Impact of Universal Pre-K on Child Care Providers in FWISD 2014 pre-k – assuming parents can provide transportation and can provide before and after-school care when it is needed. We can further estimate that the number of 4-year-olds that will attend FWISD UPK that are not economically disadvantaged totals 1610. Since we know that 80 UPK children are already enrolled, then it is possible that 1,530 UPK children will enroll in free public pre-k. Table 16. FWISD Universal Pre-K Enrollment Projections
Estimated number of pre-k students that will attend FWISD TEA Eligible Pre-K students Actual Number of economically disadvantaged pre-k students enrolled Estimated additional enrollment of economically disadvantaged pre-k students (based on published 77% of all FWISD students are economically disadvantaged) Estimated Total Number of economically disadvantaged pre-k students UPK students (not economically disadvantaged) Actual Number of UPK students enrolled Estimated additional enrollment of UPK students Estimated Total Number of UPK students
Number of PreK Students 7,000
% of Estimated Pre-K Students 100%
4,686
67%
704
10%
5,390
77%
80 1,530 1,610
1% 22% 23%
The question that still remains unanswered is: where will the 2,234 additional estimated 4-yearold pre-k students come from? Will they be pulled from private child care providers or will a portion of them come from children not currently in the care of a private provider. While Bassok’s findings indicate that the availability of public pre-k will increase overall demand, resulting in more 4-year-olds enrolled in pre-k overall than would otherwise have been in child care, it is not clear how many of the children currently in private child care will instead enroll in public pre-k the following year. Without this information it is difficult to determine how substantial the impact of crowd-out will be. While the research cannot determine what the overall impact of public pre-k will be on the private child care market as a whole, findings clearly demonstrate that on the micro-level, most individual child care providers are feeling some level of negative impact from FWISD pre-k.
Minimizing the Impact of Crowd-Out Increase the number of public/private partnerships To minimize crowd-out, FWISD could follow Lori Taylor’s recommendation to increase the number of public/private partnerships in providing pre-k services. In the 2014-2015 school year, 19% (880) of FWISD pre-k students participate in a public/private collaboration through two collaboration programs. The Ready Start Program is in partnership with Head Start FWISD and serves 640 children (14% of current pre-k enrollment) in 32 Ready Start Classrooms. An additional 240 students (5% of current pre-k enrollment) are served through off-campus integrated co-teaching collaborations with 7 Child Development Centers. There appears to be 51 | P a g e
