Montgomery, Ala. – During his inauguration address today, Alabama Governor Robert Bentley pledged to make Alabama’s high-quality, voluntary pre-kindergarten program available for all families by the end of his second term.
In his remarks the Governor said, “At the end of the next four years we will be able to tell every parent in Alabama there is a pre-k classroom available for your child.”
Members of the Alabama School Readiness Alliance Pre-K Task Force – a group of 40 prominent leaders from the business, education, civic, medical, legal, philanthropic, military and child advocacy communities – welcomed Governor Bentley’s pledge. In the 2015 legislative session, the ASRA Pre-K Task Force is encouraging state leaders to increase funding for Alabama’s First Class Program by an additional $13.2 million.
“We join every Alabamian in congratulating Governor Bentley and all of the state officials sworn in today,” said Robert Powers and Mike Luce, the co-chairs of the Alabama School Readiness Alliance Pre-K Task Force. “We are grateful for their leadership and encouraged that Governor Bentley is continuing to make expansion of the state’s nationally recognized pre-k program a cornerstone of his administrative policy. We look forward to working with him and our legislative champions to make our shared vision of ‘pre-k for all’ a reality.”
For eight-years in a row, Alabama’s First Class Pre-K program, which is managed by the Alabama Department of Children’s Affairs, has been ranked the number one pre-kindergarten program in the country for quality. By closing the school readiness gap, First Class Pre-K has been able to close the later academic achievement gaps between low-income participants and their higher-income peers by an average of 25 percent. However, in the 2014-2015 school year, there are only enough classrooms statewide to reach approximately 12 percent of the state’s four-year-olds.
The Alabama School Readiness Alliance is leading a ten-year campaign, now entering its third year, to fully fund Alabama’s high-quality and voluntary First Class Pre-K program while maintaining the program’s strong benchmarks for quality and accountability.Click here to view the 2015 Alabama School Readiness Alliance’s Pre-K Task Force’s Recommendations.
