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The Illinois State Board of Education has until Wednesday to encourage school districts, child care centers, community centers and other organizations in “preschool desert areas” to apply for the Early Childhood Block Grant, which is a considerable chunk of the 2024 budget — aimed at improving access to preschool — signed Wednesday by Gov. J.B. Pritzker.
The grant is part of the governor’s Smart Start initiative, which increases funding for child care providers and invests in early childhood facilities.
The total appropriation to ISBE for the Early Childhood Block Grant for 2024 is approximately $673 million, with $75 million of the budget allocated specifically to put Illinois on a path to creating more than 20,000 new pre-K spots.
“We’ve never seen a budget in the state of Illinois that really prioritizes education the way this one does,” state Superintendent Tony Sanders said Friday. “I think everybody is beginning to recognize — not just in the education sector, but even in the corporate sector — the importance of early childhood education. It is clear from all the research that it’s the best investment we can make in our children’s future and the future of our state.”
And ISBE’s top priority is to reach over 50 regional areas throughout the state that have insufficient publicly funded preschool seats to serve at least 80% of 3- and 4-year-old children from low-income families. Illinois ranks eighth in the nation for preschool enrollment, but the list of preschool deserts is extensive, said Sanders, adding that there are thousands of children across 178 cities and towns in Illinois without access to preschool.
“Working with Gov. Pritzker, I know one of his priorities was to see exactly where we were lacking seats across Illinois,” Sanders said. “And that was one of the reasons and catalysts for the Smart Start program — when he saw in numbers the needs that we had across the state.”
ISBE provides a priority list on its website that identifies those district regions, counties and ZIP codes classified as preschool deserts. Toward the bottom of the webpage near the toggle map, “Slots needed” means the number of additional preschool seats the area needs in order to serve 80% of low-income 3- and 4-year-old children.
Based on the map, Cook County requires approximately 3,470 more preschool seats to accommodate preschool-aged children not enrolled in an early childhood program.
Skokie School District 68, for example, serves only 48% of 3- and 4-year-old children from low-income families. Glenview Community Consolidated School District 34 isn’t meeting the needs at all and requires 270 preschool slots to accommodate 3- to 4-year-olds eligible for early childhood education.
Outside of school districts, the grant application is open to regional offices of education, university laboratory schools approved by ISBE, charter schools, area vocational centers, public or private day care centers, and community centers providing early childhood education.
Sana Bhojani, executive director at Mosaic Early Childhood Center in Skokie, said she is applying for the Preschool For All expansion, one of three types of programs providers can apply for within the Early Childhood Block Grant.
Bhojani said her center, which serves children from age 6 weeks to 12 years, would use the grant toward new materials and to expand its hours.
“Ideally, we’d like to open up a couple more classrooms and take on more staff,” she said Friday. “We’ve always said we want extra classroom staff, so if funds come in, we can get that.”
She said the preschool ratio at Mosaic Early Childhood Center is currently 10 students to one teacher.
ISBE officials noted that providers could apply for funding the salaries of the teachers who will teach additional students. Still, providers cannot apply for funding to increase wages for existing programs. The state board said this funding is to increase access rather than increase the quality of existing programs.
Bhojani said that education centers, much like public and private day care centers, are often misunderstood or not given credit where it’s due.
“We’re really trying to push that it’s not babysitting. We call it school,” she said. “Even when somebody comes with an infant, we say, ‘Oh, they’re going to be in school, and they’re going to be a student.’ We have full lesson plans, and the state board has curriculums that we follow and use in our classrooms. And those are tested and studied curriculums.”
Because the center doesn’t follow district boundaries, students from areas outside of Skokie can attend as well, and they are typically always full except for one or two slots left at any given time, Bhojani said.
Bhojani noted that early childhood centers stress the importance of social and emotional learning, starting even before children are eligible for preschool.
The governor’s budget leans heavily toward children and education opportunities for young kids, making it easier for Republicans and Democrats to get behind, said state Senate President Don Harmon.
“Every dollar we spend today on kids, from the time they’re conceived until they head off to kindergarten, is maybe the best money we can spend,” Harmon said Friday. “It comes back to us dressed up as an awful lot more money and in medium and long-term savings. The challenge has always been the extra resources you need to get over the hump. But it has been easy to convince our Democratic colleagues in the caucus, and it wasn’t evidenced in votes on the budget. Still, Republicans support early childhood intervention education and care as well.”
Since the governor first floated the idea of a free preschool-for-all system, educators across the state wondered how demand could be met from an infrastructure standpoint.
Harmon said there is money for infrastructure for early childhood education providers, but districts have to be willing to play the long game.
“Remember, this is not a snap your fingers, and everything is in place proposal,” he said. “We were able to pass the Kindergarten For All initiative to make sure that all-day kindergarten is available. Not every family will take up that offer, but we’ll make sure it’s available in the state over the next year or so. This is a long-term commitment and one that’s overdue.”
Along with the grant option to expand preschool to five hours, the Early Childhood Block Grant provides half-day Preschool For All, which would be 2.5 hours per day with licensed teachers and a standards-aligned curriculum. Another option is the Prevention Initiative, which includes home visiting and center-based programs that provide intensive, research-based and comprehensive child development and family support services for expectant parents and families with children from birth to age 3.
Because Chicago Public Schools receives a separate grant for early childhood services, which it uses to offer pre-K for 3- and 4-year-olds districtwide, the Early Childhood Block Grant prioritizes applicants outside Chicago.
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Heather Pruett, regional council manager for Birth to Five Illinois, has been integral in closing preschool deserts in the state. Her team assists with accessing, understanding and utilizing preschool desert data in funding applications in Region 13, which includes Clinton, Jefferson, Washington and Marion counties.
Pruett said 10 communities have been identified as a preschool deserts in Region 13.
“There are several areas where there is an extensive waitlist to get into a preschool program,” Pruett said. “And for some of these priority areas, parents have to travel a little bit farther outside of where they live to access preschool. So increasing slots in these higher poverty areas, where the slots don’t currently exist, will be really beneficial for those families.”
Sanders said he highly encourages any qualified early childhood provider to take advantage of the grant opportunity.
“Take a look at the desert areas; look at the application process. And, please, get your applications in,” he said.
For more information, visit isbe.net/preschool.
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