Girls at Apples and Bananas preschool in Santa Rosa play with fabric. The school is moving this summer to make way for construction of a new high school.

Girls at Apples and Bananas preschool in Santa Rosa play with fabric. The schoolhouse is moving this summer to make way for structure of a new high school.

At Willow Creek State Preschool in Santa Rosa last calendar week, site supervisor Paula Schaefer and one of her teachers organized piles of books, supplies and other classroom items as a construction coiffure worked nearby.

The city-owned building that houses the preschool needs a new roof and other renovations to accommodate the 48 preschoolers who will nourish morning and afternoon sessions when school resumes in August. Repairs are underway, thanks to a i-fourth dimension edifice fund that Sonoma County established this year to fix up aging preschool buildings.

Also last week, in neighboring Marin County, an enthusiastic crowd of more 100 people, including local government and school officials, parents and other supporters of early education, gathered at a movie theater in downtown San Rafael to promote plans for a countywide ballot measure out that would heighten Marin's sales revenue enhancement by ¼ cent to expand preschool access for children from low-income families.

The counties' contrasting approaches to funding early on pedagogy programs highlight the efforts of local governments across the state to expand access to preschools.

Gov. Jerry Brown has made it clear that there are limits to his largesse when it comes to early didactics. In his revised upkeep last month, Brown proposed funding 2,500 boosted part-day slots for preschool students with special needs. But yet unserved are big numbers of 3- and 4-year-olds who exercise non have access to state subsidized preschools.

Brown is preaching fiscal restraint, despite a state budget that is one-3rd larger than it was during the recession. "I practice not desire to be caught in the jaws of the persistent fiscal instability of the country of California," the governor said final month as he unveiled his revised upkeep for 2015-16 fiscal year.

Willow Creek state preschool in Santa Rosa will get a new roof and refurbished restrooms this summer.

Michael Collier/EdSource

Willow Creek Country Preschool in Santa Rosa volition become a new roof and refurbished restrooms this summer.

Land lawmakers are pushing legislation that would allocate more than funding than Brown is calling for, simply there is no certainty that he would sign any bills that telephone call for more than funding. That puts the onus on local governments to figure out how they will pay for expanding preschools in their communities.

The Willow Creek preschool, and a dozen others in the county, are funded past the California Department of Education and operated by the nonprofit Community Child Care Council of Sonoma County. Many of those facilities are in need of repairs.

In response to those needs, the county lath of supervisors and the Kickoff 5 Sonoma County Committee, which is funded by tobacco taxes, agreed terminal month to create a 1-time $655,000 building fund that would renovate preschool facilities so that they could accommodate a bigger share of the county's preschoolers.

When the work is completed, the county's preschool facilities volition be able to provide space for an additional 600 preschool slots – nearly the number that were lost during the recession.

At that level, there would exist enough slots for most i-3rd of the i,900 depression-income 3- and 4-twelvemonth-olds in the county who currently don't take access to preschools there, said Alfredo Perez, Executive Manager of First v Sonoma, which helps fund early educational activity programs in the county with money from California's tobacco tax, which was approved by country voters in 1998.

By contrast, rather than relying on erstwhile funding, child care advocates in Marin are pushing a sales tax measure that would fund preschool and early pedagogy programs for low-income children for nearly a decade.

The goal to provide quality preschool to low-income kids in the county "is doable, only it volition accept all of usa" to brand information technology happen, Marin Canton Supervisor Judy Arnold said at an event to rally back up for a one/four-cent sales tax to fund early education programs in the county.

In order to pass, the measure would crave "yes" votes from at least two-thirds of voters. The tax would fund early education programs in the county for nine years, unless voters supported an extension. Backers of the ballot mensurate campaign, known as Marin Strong Start, said one selling point of the initiative is that all proceeds from the ¼-cent taxation would directly benefit early instruction in the county – in the same way that county sales taxes take benefited transportation improvements in California counties.

The tax plan won backing from canton supervisors a year ago, merely in July proponents of the initiative agreed non to put the mensurate on last November'due south ballot. They decided to hold the mensurate until the 2022 general ballotsubsequently polls showed that voters were non likely to approve both the children'south measure and a 2nd local tax measure out on the 2022 ballot, which funded the county'south emergency radio communications.

Marin County's board of supervisors continues to back up the sales tax measure, although changes could exist made to the initiative until belatedly summer next year, before the borderline for certifying the measure for the canton election.

Preschoolers create Lego characters at Apples and Bananas preschool in Santa Rosa. The school is being moved to make way for construction of a new high school.

Michael Collier/EdSource

Preschoolers create Lego characters at Apples and Bananas preschool in Santa Rosa. The school is being moved to brand way for structure of a new high school.

Supervisor Judy Arnold, who attended the event at the Rafael cinema, said the goal of providingquality preschool to low-income kids in the county "is achievable, only it will take all of united states" to arrive happen.

Both Marin and Sonoma counties have pockets of extreme wealth and poverty, and growing Spanish-speaking communities. Only Sonoma has the edge on poverty over Marin, in function because of its reliance on low-income labor that helps sustain the wine industry and other industries and businesses related to it.

Nearly 14 percent of students in Marin's public schools are English language learners, compared with 22 percent of public schoolhouse students in Sonoma Canton, co-ordinate to Census data. Most 33,000 children in Sonoma County were v years old or younger in 2014, well-nigh twice the number of children in Marin who were in that historic period range, according to Census data.

Sonoma Canton officials likewise are seeking philanthropic support to bolster their preschool programs. Last week, they appear a partnership with the Constitute for Child Success, a South Carolina nonprofit that is providing the county with technical assist for up to nine months to develop a data-based model for improving outcomes for iii- and 4-twelvemonth-olds who now are learning at the remedial level.

If the canton offers convincing evidence that the low-performing students could exist ready for kindergarten afterwards 2 years of high-quality preschool, the nonprofit would seek investors to provide money up front to expand preschools. The idea is that students who caught up with their peers and were gear up for kindergarten would salve the county's 40 school districts the toll of keeping those aforementioned children in remedial and special education programs for many years.

Sonoma County officials also are considering a partnership with the Sonoma Canton Nurse-Family unit Partnership program, which provides depression-income, outset-time mothers and their babies with dwelling visits from registered nurses, Perez said. That program could save the county health care costs.

The changes aimed at creating more access to preschools in the county come with some disruption.

For 22 years, the Apples and Bananas school, operated by the nonprofit Customs Child Care Council of Sonoma County, has been a friendly learning place for kids in a Santa Rosa neighborhood. Parents and their children would make a brusque walk to school.

Come up August, Apples and Bananas will move to a new location – in a heart school iii miles away. The motility is needed to make way for construction of a new high schoolhouse where the aging preschool portables now stand up.

In Marin County, Ethel Seiderman, an early pedagogy pioneer and advocate who opened the nonprofit Fairfax-San Anselmo Children's Center in 1973, was unhappy with the decision terminal year to postpone the sales tax measure to expand preschools until the 2022 ballot.

Her bulletin to canton officials when they consider the mensurate again in 2016: "Don't be fickle," said Seiderman, who is in her 80s. "Don't dump this for something else. There is ever something else."

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