California Watch

    Reversing a decades-long trend, the percentage of Latino children attending preschool across the U.S. declined between 2005 and 2009, with possible far-reaching consequences for California.

    That’s the conclusion of a report by UC Berkeley researchers, to be released at the Education Writers Association’s annual conference in New Orleans.

    The drop in Latino attendance could be a result of multiple factors, the researchers say. One is that the unemployment rate of Hispanic women over the age of 20 nearly doubled between 2005 and 2009, mainly as a fallout from the Great Recession that began in 2007. That means that these women either were less able to afford preschool, or felt that it wasn’t needed because they could care for their children themselves at no cost.

    Another cause could be cutbacks in state budgets, which resulted in fewer subsidized preschool slots, or more stringent income eligibility requirements. Also contributing to the decline could be fears among immigrant parents without authorization to work in the United States that having their children in preschool programs could bring them to the attention of immigration authorities.

    The report does not break down attendance by state, but the implications for California are obvious. For the first time more than half of all children in California are of Latino descent, according to a recent U.S. Census report.

    Because attending quality preschools is associated with greater success in school, the declining proportion could widen an already yawning achievement gap between Latino children and non-Hispanic whites in California and other states.

    “We know that quality preschool lifts the early literacy and social skills of Latino children, especially those from Spanish-speaking homes,” said Bruce Fuller, study co-author and a UC Berkeley professor of education and public policy. “So, as fewer Latino kids benefit from preschool, they will experience less success as they move through school.”

    Cutbacks in funding in California has meant that many preschools have had to cut their programs to a mere three hours a day, said Beatriz Leyva-Cutler, executive director of the Bay Area Hispano Institute for Advancement (BAHIA), which operates a preschool program named Centro Vida, now in its 36th year.

    But working parents require many more than three hours, she said. For an average eight-hour work day, plus commute hours, they would need 10 hours of preschool plus child care. With only three hours of preschool available, many feel they have no choice but to stay home with their children rather than work, or have to find other family members or friends to take care of them instead. The state has also piled on many new application requirements, including numerous documents that families often don’t have. “When they see the piles of paper they have to submit, there is a lot of frustration,” Leyva-Cutler says.

    Leyva-Cutler, who is also president of the board of the Berkeley Unified School District, said that it is also middle-class families who are affected, because of the recession simply they can’t afford to pay the full cost of preschool. Any family of four with an income greater than $46,900 doesn’t quality for any assistance whatsoever, she said. 

    “It’s challenging all the way around, for providers and families,” she said.

    Berkeley’s Fuller said that if Gov. Jerry Brown’s efforts to extend sales and other taxes to close the state’s $25 billion budget deficit fail, “the count of all children entering preschool will likely continue to decline.”

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