The Impact of Universal Pre-K on Child Care Providers in FWISD 2014
Appendix VII: Survey Comments – Child Care Centers Impact of Pre-K on Child Care Centers Impacts to Financial Stability Increased Costs – Ratios Because ratios are lower for pre-k, the income for pre-k helps to balance out the cost of infant care where the ratios are not as cost effective. Hard to say - Have to think about sustainability since lower ratios service for younger children-more costly. Have to find a lot of three year olds to fill classes. Demand is greater for Infants and Toddlers Ratios are so much greater - losing older children has a greater impact financially and slots are harder to fill Increased Costs – Transportation I have had to increase van runs this school year to pick up at 2:15 for the Pre-K children. I have to find care for them from the time they arrive to me until the time that my older children arrive back at the center. Maybe we will have to transport 4 year olds, which is a safety issue. Transportation Vehicle purchase to accommodate more van runs. We are looking at transportation, it is something we are very uneasy about because of height and weight requirements, and we are concerned that 4 year olds would not ride safely strapped in without additional staff on the bus. Decreased Enrollment Enrollment is down I don't have a lot of 4's at this time I feel like this effort will affect daycares in a negative manner. We will lose children. It takes children from our Child Care center It will greatly impact our enrollment It's been a gradual impact over the last 5-6 years. Filling 4 years old classes has been a problem. Can't compete with FWISD 4 year old pre-k classes. Don't have a problem with 3 years old classes. FWISD stopped service 3year-olds on campus. But serving them in some Head Start Less children Losing the children will decrease income coming into center My program could be cut in half for next school year. Our enrollment needs to be almost at capacity to make our budget work. If children start going to public pre-k, it will affect our enrollment quite a bit. The 4 year-old are my biggest group. I very seldom had openings for that age group. The amount of children that we will serve The impact would mean fewer students which would impact our school, since over the years the child care program has fed into our school. The people that were going to leave have already left. Might lose one or two more. But children who are coming because of DT location, quality, hours of operations. YWCA also is available/eligible to have a FWISD Pre-school class. Has a pre-k class at Polytechnic and Arlington Center. The Pre-k program builds the commitment to the school and leads to enrollment in our private school grades; which is also seeing a decline due to free Charter School opportunities. This year we had a number of children who just missed the cut off. In 2015, we will have 32 children going to kindergarten. I know this will impact us. However, my hope is that we will have additional younger children that we can offer services to. We have two pre-k classes now and I have a huge concern when our threes move up and whether or not they will move to U Pre-K We lost a nice amount of kids to the Pre-K program and lost even more since they have started the 3 year old program We normally lose 50% of our preschool to public school kindergarten but when you lose 50% of a class of 9, it does not leave enough students to operate our upper grades Decreased Revenues As enrollment decreases we will have to dip into savings to cover salaries
78 | P a g e
