$244M cut is proposed for Ohio pre-K program

COLUMBUS (AP) — Early-childhood advocates say planned cuts to Ohio’s pre-kindergarten programs will shortchange children at the most critical time in their development, but the Ohio Senate says it simply has no more money to offer.

Early-childhood education programs, including public preschool and mental-health programs, would be cut by $244 million in the two-year budget plan approved by the Ohio House. The cuts would nearly erase a $270 million boost in funding the programs received in the current budget that ends June 30.

“If we are going to be creating a new 21st-century education system and putting more state resources into education, cutting early-childhood education just undermines this investment,” Katie Kelly, director of Ohio Groundwork, said Tuesday.

The Senate is to hold a hearing Wednesday on the two-year budget plan.

Gov. Ted Strickland and lawmakers plan to boost funding to kindergarten through 12th grades but extend a tuition freeze at the state’s major colleges and universities for another year. But those funding decisions are made possible by an influx of federal economic stimulus dollars, enabling the state to spend more on public education even though it is spending less in state dollars, said state Sen. John Carey, the Republican chairman of the Finance Committee.

Carey said the state did not get any stimulus dollars for early-childhood education.

“We just don’t have $244 million,” he said. “The reality is that it will be difficult to fund what’s in the budget now.”

Carey said he believed early-childhood education programs were good investments, but the state could not afford to fund them at the same level.

Lawmakers likely will have to cut at least $2 billion out of the budget proposal approved by the House on April 29. Since then, revenue forecasts have fallen sharply downward, and lawmakers apparently will have to use most or all of the state’s roughly $1 billion rainy-day fund to plug a gap in the current budget. They previously had hoped to use the money for the next two fiscal years.