PERCEPTIONS OF PUBLIC PRE-K AMONG CHILD CARE PROVIDERS

participate in annual training, they are generally not active participants in information networks (associations, partnerships, list-servs) that distribute information relevant to their business. Focus group and site visit participants also believe that FWISD could do a better job collaborating with child care providers and keeping them better informed. Access to information is an area of particular need among child care homes.

In addition to being uninformed, almost all (88%) child care homes are unsure how their operations might be affected by pre-k expansion. This uncertainty aligns in part with survey comments and focus group and site visit findings suggesting that home-based providers are much less likely than centers to approach their operations with traditional business practices such as budgeting. Though survey comments of homes frequently mention their focus on costsavings as a mechanism to maintain financial stability, many consider tuition as personal income, rather than in the traditional accounting sense of revenue to offset expenses, and thus cannot truly predict the impact of losing an enrolled 4 year-old. This indicates an increased need for business support for home-based providers so that they are best able to minimize the impact of public pre-k on their businesses. The benefit of this business support would not be limited to home-based providers, as many smaller child care centers also lack a traditional accounting model to track revenues and expenses.

Even for providers that have thought about how they will be impacted by FWISD universal pre-k expansion, planning to address FWISD pre-k expansion is seriously limited by the lack of information available about where the additional bond-funded FWISD pre-k classrooms will be located and the date they will commence operation. As one survey respondent comments: “I was aware of this happening and we are not sure how this is going to impact our enrollment. We are in a holding pattern at this time.” Focus group and site visit participants indicated that locations and timing is a “moving target,” and that perhaps once they know when and where the additional pre-k classes will be located, they can better strategize how to minimize some of their financial losses. Providers stressed that collaboration and communication from FWISD would be helpful in their planning.

Perceptions of Public Pre-K among Child Care Providers

Regardless of their prior awareness of FWISD’s universal pre-k expansion plans, all Providers participating in the survey, focus groups, and site visits received a brief neutral overview of the District’s plans as detailed in the 2013 bond package. This description is provided along with the survey questions in Appendix XII. The general perception of FWISD pre-k expansion among survey respondents align with Lori Taylor’s findings that public pre-kindergarten has and will gradually crowd private child care providers out of the pre-k market, if not out of the child care market overall. Whether pleading, angry, or resigned, survey comments express the competition private providers feel with FWISD. One respondent elaborated on this competitive position saying: “For the past 10 years we have been competing heavily with the I.S.D.'s...

Slowly but surely we are being crowded out of the industry, resulting in less choice for families...” Focus group and site visit participants that had already lost children to public pre-k consistently commented that public pre-k is free – a price with which they could not compete. One focus group participant expressed the impact of price saying, “Parents may not be as concerned about what is best for their child, but what is best for their pocket.”

In addition to their personal business struggles, providers share concerns that the quality of public pre-k is less than that of private child care providers, and thus “crowd-out” would reduce the overall quality of available child care for 4-year-olds. Focus group and site visit participants expressed concern about placing a 4-year-old in a large classroom in a public school environment that “would be too regimented and would not focus on allowing the children to have fun.” They also mentioned that parents prefer having their children stay in the same place all day rather than moving them around from one facility to another.

While some child care providers do not offer a pre-k curriculum to 4-year-olds, most child care centers position their 4-year-old programs as private pre-kindergarten (as opposed to child care). These providers view pre-k expansion as increased competition between private and public education and frame their comments around quality of private programs over public. This was also true for focus group and site visit participants, all of whom perceived that they offer better quality and a better curriculum than FWISD. This private-public tension is evident in one survey respondent’s rather provocative comment: “The parents of the children in my private program do not want their children in the public school setting for a 4 year old. Therefore, I seem to have more educated parents who want a quality education for their young child.” Similarly, within the focus groups, centers that classified themselves as private preschools were less concerned about FWISD pre-k since they assumed their parents would keep their 4-year-olds in private preschool due to smaller ratios, smaller class size, and their perceptions of higher quality and higher level of all around care.

In addition to questions of quality, focus group and site visit participants suggested additional limitations to FWISD’s universal pre-k that they believe would limit their loss of students. They mentioned that, as most of their parents work 8 hours a day, they need care before and after the hours of FWISD pre-k classes and cannot transport their child to and from the school for a 6 hour day of public pre-k. While one participant shared a parent’s statement about price that “We really love you, but it’s free,” they noted that this parent was able to have a family member pick up their child from public pre-k. Some participating centers that have children who live outside FWISD expressed that these parents work in Fort Worth and find it convenient to bring their children to a child care facility close to work rather than close to home. Though survey and focus group participants were not asked to describe the geographic make-up of their students, it is possible that this convenience impacts surveyed providers as well, and that it may apply also to parents within FWISD that choose providers convenient to work rather than home (where their 4-year-old would attend public pre-k). Convenience of location and hours of 33 | P a g e