Governor Brown’s 2012-2013 budget proposal would severely damage the state’s early learning system for infants, toddlers and preschoolers. This system helps ensure California ’s youngest children have the strong developmental foundation they need to succeed in elementary school and beyond. The high returns on investment in early learning programs are clearly established, from improving the state’s financial outlook to closing the achievement gap to bolstering lifetime academic achievement.

Yet, already, early learning has lost $1.2 billion in funding since 2008, resulting in 100,000 fewer slots for the state’s young children who need them. On top of that, the Governor is now proposing adding another half-billion-dollar cut, which would keep 62,000 more young children from gaining the early social and cognitive development experiences that are critical to their lifetime well-being. Additionally, the Administration wants to eliminate funding for Transitional Kindergarten. This would deny another 40,000 young children access to school.

Making matters worse, the Governor’s proposal would stall out recent successful efforts to ensure program quality throughout the system by taking responsibility for these programs away from the Department of Education, which has quality controls in place.

Denying young children access to quality early learning is clearly the wrong direction for California .

California begins with kids.™