RE: Question 1: Pre-school support-What's in the Plan

Re: 5.1 
Develop and fund new facilities

I very much agree that the existing third party payment situation for welfare-to-work childcare needs to be streamlined to meet the needs of both the families and the providers.  The current turnaround for payment is one month in arrears while families paying their own tuition are required to pay one week in advance of services.

Rather than reinvent the wheel, wouldn't it be more cost effective to have the State of California sponsor low-income children in existing private high quality preschools at full tuition cost? Excellent services already exist and it would also allow low-income children to be "mainstreamed" with middle and high income families, instead of being separated in an altruistic "ghetto".

High quality preschools are easily identifiable, I would be happy to supply a rubric of excellence to measure services against, but looking for programs accredited by the NAEYC (the National Association for the Education of Young Children) is a great place to start.