Photo courtesy Seeds of Learning Early Childhood Center.
The Town Council met last week to discuss a couple of entitlements.
I don’t want my use of the word ‘entitlements’ to be taken as derogatory. As was discussed in Part Five, entitlements are a normal part of human society.
For example, in most of the world’s nations, children of a certain age are entitled to a free, public education.
Additionally, a number of countries provide a free college education for qualified applicants. Those countries are: Austria, Argentina, Brazil, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Kenya, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Morocco, Norway, Panama, Poland, Scotland, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, and Uruguay.
As we knows, the U.S. does not fund free college. While we fund thirteen years of free education for children — kindergarten through 12th grade — our young adults are not entitled to free higher education.
The world’s 8th richest country — the United States of America — does not embrace that particular entitlement.
One of the entitlements discussed last night during the Town Council meeting was related to ‘early childhood education’, sometimes referred to as ‘preschool’… or ‘Pre-K’… or ‘childcare’.
Through our new Universal Preschool program, Colorado ensures that every child — in the year before they are eligible for kindergarten — is eligible for half-day (15 hours per week), state-funded, voluntary preschool beginning in the 2023-24 school year. Three-year-olds with qualifying factors are eligible for part-time (10 hours per week) preschool programming.
The legislation to establish the Colorado Department of Early Childhood and Universal Preschool Program, HB22-1295, passed the General Assembly with bipartisan support and was signed into law by the Governor in April 2022.
From the Department of Early Childhood website:
The Colorado Universal Preschool Program is expected save families an average of $4,300 per year on child care. High quality preschool programs are known to aid in a child’s development and to have social, academic, and economic benefits that are carried with that child throughout their life. The launch of this program, as a result of the voter-approved Proposition EE, builds on Colorado’s long-standing commitment to children and families and helps ensure that they are valued, healthy and thriving.
This entitlement appears to have an ‘educational’ goal, basically an attempt to better prepare four-year-olds for the academic rigors of a modern kindergarten classroom.
For many parents, however, the need exists for both parents — or a single parent — to work full-time. In those families, the need may exist for at least 40 hours a week of childcare, and may include children younger than three years old. Looked at from that perspective, the childcare issue is related more to ‘economic development’ than to educational advancement.
The Town of Pagosa Springs has been allocating municipal tax dollars to support childcare providers for the past 20 years, although the level of funding increased notably in 2017 when the Town and County jointly agreed to more aggressively fund local childcare efforts. Much of the enhanced funding went towards the creation of the new Wings childcare center. Years earlier, the Town had provided a parcel of vacant public land to facilitate construction of the Seeds of Learning childcare center.
The adopted 2023 budget for the Town of Pagosa Springs includes a line item for $150,000 for ‘early childcare and education’. This allocation is intended for funding childcare centers, in-home childcare, and other needs related to early childhood.
From the Council’s January 3 agenda packet:
Staff is seeking direction on how Council would like to go about receiving requests and making decisions for these funding allocations. In the past, the Council has awarded funds through an application process and has also accepted presentations instead. Requests will likely come from the following:
- WINGS (for expansion project)
- Head Start (funded in the past)
- Seeds of Learning (funded in the past)
- In home day cares (approx four of these exist and were funded in the past)
- New Early Childhood Council of Archuleta County (operational needs, just formed)
Please note this list is not exclusive and there may be other entities reaching out for funding.
Please direct staff in how Council would like to advertise for these funds, what type of application or information is desired on their request, deadlines for applications, and how much would be allotted to each bucket (e.g. in home day cares vs. centers)…
The Council’s decision, following a lengthy discussion, was to schedule a future work session specifically to talk about how tax-funded entitlements should be distributed to local childcare providers. The concerns expressed by the Council focused on the ‘economic development’ aspect of childcare — getting parents back into the workforce . I don’t recall anyone mentioning the supposed ‘educational benefits’ of preschool.
The other entitlement discussion concerned a newly modified idea to have Dallas-based Servitas LLC serve as developer for perhaps 58 apartment units just south of Walmart in Aspen Village.
The Town began negotiating with Servitas about 18 months ago, when the plan was to build perhaps 64 ‘workforce housing’ rental units along Apache Street.
Then the Council changed direction and decided to purchase 3 acres of vacant residential property adjacent to the existing Enclave condominiums near Walmart, and to have Servitas develop up to 98 units. But the Servitas plan that followed that decision was built upon rental prices that few working households in Pagosa Springs could reasonably afford.
Then the Town staff decided to apply for some newly-available Colorado grant funding, to see if the rental prices could be subsidized with state tax money. The Town is also considering the creation of some ‘for sale’ townhome units, possibly in collaboration with Servitas, but that project seems to present some financing hurdles.
The Servitas plan we heard about last night suggested 58 apartment units, at a cost of about $20 million. So then, $350,000 per unit.
Servitas calculates the average rent for these (relatively small) apartment units at about $1,900 per month.
I’m not sure if any working households in Pagosa Springs would view a small apartment priced at $1,900 a month to be “an entitlement”…