Social Investment
Publicly financed pre-school for those who can’t afford it would reduce to about 29 percent from almost 36 percent the segment of the population that in the long run will be poor, according to a National Bureau of Economic Research study released in May. It would also boost the college graduation rate for children whose parents didn’t attend a university to almost 14 percent from about 10 percent, the study said.
“High-quality early education is one of the very best social investments we can make,” said Walter Gilliam, an associate professor of psychology at Yale University School of Medicine’s Child Study Center. “The economic investment pays off.”
Poll Support
A group backing de Blasio’s plan called UPK NYC includes Roger Altman, founder of Evercore Partners Inc.; Harvey Weinstein, co-chairman of the Weinstein Co.; and actress Cynthia Nixon, who starred in “Sex and the City.” According to the group, about $340 million of the money raised through the tax would be spent giving full-time education to almost 50,000 4- year-olds who are in part-time programs or none at all. About $190 million would provide almost 120,000 middle-school students with programs between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m.
Sixty-three percent of New York state voters support de Blasio’s proposal, according to a Nov. 27 poll by Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. De Blasio won the November election by a 49-point margin. The new mayor will carry that support with him to Albany, and he’s appointed as his budget director Dean Fuleihan, who spent 16 years as a policy adviser to Silver.
“We have a huge wave of support after the election to pass universal pre-K, to get after-school for every middle- schooler and to do it by passing a tax on the wealthiest New Yorkers,” Emma Wolfe, de Blasio’s director of intergovernmental affairs, said at a press briefing last month. “We’re going to do it the same way we’ve always done it: There’s going to be a strong grassroots effort.”