A booming education idea goes bust in California

08-15-2011

By Emily Alpert/Voice of San Diego

The trouble came to Noemi Zermeno in an envelope. She spotted it when she was dropping off her three kids at their Linda Vista preschool, tucked into the binder where she signs them in and out. "I started panicking," she said. The single mom can see the preschool from her front door. She had just moved to the little beige duplex across Jewett Street, wanting to live closer to the school she and her children adore. Now that preschool was out of reach. The letter in that envelope tipped her off: California had cut Zermeno out of public preschool, saying she made too much money. And with three kids to care for, Zermeno discovered that even the cheapest private preschools would chew up half of her paychecks as a dental assistant. So Zermeno made a choice: She cut back her hours to make sure she could stay in public preschool. The new rules say that families of four cannot make much more than $3,900 a month. Zermeno has to count her hours carefully every week. There is a boom in national buzz about preschool, bolstered by stacks of studies that show a good preschool can get stunning results much later in life. (more...)

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A booming education idea goes bust in California

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