EDITORIAL: Indiana's preschoolers deserving of a better bill

That’s precisely the fate it deserved. House Bill 1004 wasn’t an early-learning bill – it was a voucher-expansion bill, cleverly designed to benefit church-based schools already collecting millions in tax dollars. It deserved to be shelved until lawmakers can agree on a bill that serves children from poverty, sets the highest quality standards and is designed to give them an advantage when they start kindergarten.

“The whole effort is to try to put this thing in a position where we can have a product worthy of our consideration if it should be funded,” said Sen. Luke Kenley, R-Noblesville. “It’s a step forward. It does advance the cause.”

While Kenley’s cause genuinely appears to be a quality preschool program, the original bill made no such pretenses. The best clue was that it gave oversight not to the Indiana Department of Education but to the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration. FSSA’s record in overseeing taxpayer-supported child care programs is abysmal – 22 children have died in Indiana child-care settings since 2009, including a toddler who drowned in a baptismal font at a church day care. To suggest the same agency is prepared to oversee a quality early-learning program, aligned with the state’s K-12 schools, is foolish.

The more likely reason for its agency assignment is that its sponsor did not want to place preschool under the jurisdiction of Democratic State Superintendent Glenda Ritz, a long-time advocate for quality preschool programs. It also created another way to expand a family’s eligibility for K-12 vouchers.