Posted on: Thursday, March 18, 2004

EDITORIAL
A chance for Lingle to rescue Pre-Plus

A well-meant and badly needed early education program developed during the Cayetano years, Pre-Plus, is in danger of foundering on the shoals of mismanagement and unanticipated logistical problems.

Advertiser urban Honolulu writer James Gonser informs us that the program is being scaled back because the first phase of the program ran into costly delays caused by terrible planning and lack of follow-through.

Indeed, it is just the sort of "bureaucratic mismanagement" and "red tape" that Linda Lingle railed about as a candidate and promised to eliminate.

True, Pre-Plus is an inherited program with inherited problems. This serves as an excuse with a dwindling shelf life:

The Pre-Plus program is a public-private partnership in which the state provides the buildings rent-free on school grounds, and licensed and accredited private-school providers bid to operate the preschools.

The program is a no-brainer. The sooner youngsters begin the adventure of learning language, math and cognitive and social skills, the more likely it is that they will succeed — not just in their subsequent schooling, but in life.

Early education is particularly critical for children born into poverty, many of whom need a head start to catch up with their more affluent peers in the early grades.

Nationally, more than 70 percent of children in high-income areas arrive in kindergarten with some preschool experience, but only about 30 percent of kindergartners in low-income areas have attended preschool, according to Education Week's "Quality Counts" survey.

Pre-Plus, the state's effort to overcome that disparity, began life in the Lieutenant Governor's Office before moving to the state Department of Human Services. A coordinator position was eliminated by the new administration. Somewhere in this process it began falling through the cracks.

The first 13 stand-alone classroom buildings for the program have been completed, but they are so far over budget that four to six of the next 13 planned buildings won't be built.

What's most frustrating is that five of the first 13 buildings have stood empty and unused since fall of 2002 because of maddening lapses such as availability of a fire hydrant near enough to the building ('Aiea Elementary), or lack of a phone line (Jefferson Elementary), or lack of approval for the sprinkler system (Fern Elementary).

Another (Waiau Elementary) was built on a site unusable without construction of an access road, while still another (Waipahu Elementary) has a problem with its fire alarm system.

All of these facilities are months away from use. That's simply unacceptable.

As a candidate, Lingle promised to hold herself "and those who serve in government accountable ... for achieving measurable results."

Getting the Pre-Plus program back on track offers a perfect test of that promise. Let's do it.