by Fran Eaton
We can't figure out why the Illinois Senate and the Illinois House so overwhelmingly jumped on Blagojevich's $45 million universal preschool bus.
It had to be because Capitol phones didn't ring off the walls in opposition. No "Mothers Against Preschool" organized and picketed their offices. No tiny little toddlers with "Don't Take Me from My Mommy" t-shirts were plopped on their desks, pulling their emotional heart strings. No stroller boycott blocked the Capitol rotunda.
That's got to be the reason why the Illinois House and the Illinois Senate voted overwhelmingly to go along with Governor Blagojevich's outlandish teacher jobs program initiating the nation's first universal preschool program.
The reason SB 1497 was so wildly supported across the aisle couldn't have been because preschool is so incredibly valuable to children's academic welfare.
The two other states who have programs approaching what Illinois will unveil over the next few months have lower high school graduation rates than Illinois. Georgia, which has had public preschool since the 90s, rests at the lowest graduation rates in the nation -- only 1 out of two of those little institutionalized toddlers will graduate from high school. Oklahoma, whose decades-old preschool program is held up as a model, boasts of a weak 74% high school graduation rate.
Where's Illinois sans universal preschool? Not good enough, of course, but better than Georgia or Oklahoma. Without putting babies on buses and hauling them off to school every day, we are still at 77%.
So what was it? What made conservative Republicans join liberal Democrats in supporting Blagojevich's plan? Pressure. Pressure from Voices for Illinois Children, teachers' unions and bleeding heart liberals who believe skewed preschool promotional studies and reject the notion that toddlers are better off with their mommies.
"It's a good thing to do, we just can't afford it," would have worked, guys, but you couldn't even bring yourself to say that.
Doesn't matter now. What's done is done. I will, however, congratulate the ten state senators who had the intestinal fortitude to vote NO on SB 1497: Brady, Burzynski, John Jones, Lauzen, Luechtefeld, Petka, Radogno, Rauschenberger, Rutherford and Watson -- ALL Republicans.
Parents, I warned you in February. This is not a hoax. Hide your babies.
