Tax Waste

I love this kind of thing. It's what childcare has had to endure for as long as I can remember. The money is there, the money is given away, the money is a pawn of state, but the money never hits the classroom. Has anyone ever looked at an early childhood classroom and seen the shortages? Do most people know what it takes to run an early childhood classroom? Because children don't read, they need the materials to learn to read and that's a lot of stuff. Most classrooms are bare. If one calculated how much money actually dribbles down to the child in the classroom, I bet it would be about one cent on a dollar. I know every time there is a grant in this town, it goes into front desks, new hallways and classroom doors to keep noise down. Noise is important; it means kids are busy and enjoying their lives.

Today's lesson: Wasting tax money

WHEN someone gives to a campaign, the money should be used for that purpose. That doesn't always happen due to loopholes in the law. Assemblyman Ron Calderon, D-Montebello, used campaign funds to entertain his staff in Las Vegas, for instance.

Now, cigarette tax dollars earmarked for early childhood education and health-care are being used in an $18-million ad campaign to launch another initiative that would usher in taxpayer-funded universal preschool for 4-year-olds. That's just not right. Worse, it's against the law. It is illegal to use taxpayer funds to support political campaigns and ballot initiatives.

The man behind the original initiative that established the First5 program that has handed out welcome grants to communities such as Pasadena and Rowland Heights among other communities in Los Angeles County and elsewhere, is Rob Reiner. Reiner now chairs the First5 Commission. The actor-activist is also the prime mover behind the preschool initiative. While Reiner's actions are well-intended, siphoning First5 money to push another initiative is, well, meatheaded.

While the First5 TV spots never mention the upcoming initiative, they tout the importance of preschool. They also allude to studies that supposedly found preschool benefits all children.

Some of those studies indicated that children in single-parent families, already at a disadvantage, and socioeconomically challenged communities do indeed benefit from preschool. But other studies point out that not all children, especially boys, thrive in such a structured environment at a young age. It's a subject that needs much more discussion and much less sound-bite education.

We've noticed that First5 commercials of late have returned to their usual good advice to parents without mention of preschool merits. Perhaps the call by the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association to pull the ads met with success. Now, the preschool initiative should repay First5 for all that very expensive airtime.