Pre-K is not ‘universal’ in Philly, but here’s why Mayor Kenney says it’s still his crowning achievement

Outgoing Mayor Jim Kenney stood this week in the ornate reception room in City Hall alongside a poster board with a message scrawled in blue crayon: “Thank you, Mayor Kenney.”

He was celebrating PHLpreK, the free pre-kindergarten program funded by his signature tax on sweetened beverages that he considers to be his crowning achievement over his eight years as mayor. Kenney has long said that expanded pre-K is a key tool to address long-term poverty and to improve educational outcomes in a city with an underfunded public-school system.

“It’s the highlight of my career and my life,” he said during the celebration, held less than two weeks before he leaves office.

But the educational programs funded by the beverage tax, including pre-K and an effort to establish “community schools,” fell short of some of the administration’s own goals.

Officials said in 2017 that they expected to offer 6,500 pre-K seats by 2023. The city is short of that — there are currently 5,250 seats at more than 200 centers across Philadelphia — due to challenges including lower-than-expected tax revenue and a shortage of educators.

In addition, pre-K is still far from “universal” in Philadelphia, as Kenney had initially pitched it. There are about 40,000 3- and 4-year-olds in the city, and some estimates say as many as half of them either don’t attend preschool or are enrolled in a program that doesn’t meet state standards.

And while PHLpreK seats are at providers in more than 40 zip codes, there remain some neighborhoods that still don’t have enough publicly funded seats to meet demand.

Vanessa Garrett Harley, deputy mayor for the Office of Children and Families, said there’s a clear need for more free pre-K seats to supplement the ones already subsidized by the state and federal governments. Incoming Mayor Cherelle Parker has said she supports the city program and hopes to expand it.

“Is it sufficient? No, it’s never sufficient,” Garrett Harley said. “We have a lot more young people who could and would qualify for it, so we’re looking forward into the future to continue to expand at the rate that we are expanding.”

Still, Kenney and his top officials say the program has been a success. More than 17,000 of the city’s 3- and 4-year-olds have attended preschool for free, and nearly all of the seats are at providers considered “high quality” under state standards.

In an interview last month, Kenney teared up recalling a woman who stopped him on the street toward the end of his first term and told him that she was able to get a job as a SEPTA bus driver because her sons were enrolled in pre-K.

“That’s pretty powerful,” Kenney said. “To be able to educate those kids, to empower this woman, a single mom, with more income for her family, were results I never expected.”

Would-be Kenney administration officials began working on designing the pre-K program even before he took office. At the time, there was a nationwide movement to improve pre-K offerings in cities, and former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio had implemented a city-funded program just two years earlier.

Anne Gemmell, who served on Kenney’s transition team and had long advocated for early childhood education, said she started talking to potential providers and gathering community feedback during the transition phase. She became Kenney’s first pre-K director, and worked to design the program in 2016 so Kenney could pitch City Council on his controversial beverage tax.

After the tax became law, its opponents sued and its future was unclear. But the administration pressed forward and launched PHLpreK in early 2017 anyway, initially funding 2,000 seats across the city for children to attend for free. They projected they’d serve 6,500 by 2023.

But a year after the program launched, that goal changed. Beverage tax revenue fell short of projections, and in 2018, the Kenney administration adjusted its estimate, saying PHLpreK could fund a maximum of 5,500 seats by 2023.

With more than 5,200 seats and the majority of them filled, the administration has come close to that goal. Gemmell, now a collaboration consultant and a member of Parker’s transition committee, said the fact that the program has grown to what it is today is “an incredible point of pride.”

“I always thought Philly could do big things,” she said. “I think it was just really a great thing for the city to say they were going to do — and then do it.”

» READ MORE: How Mayor Kenney’s soda tax ignited controversy and impacted Philadelphia

To subsidize seats, the city partnered mostly with existing pre-K providers and relied on the state’s system of quality ranking, in which operators can range from one to four “stars,” with four being top quality.

In addition to funding seats, the city created a program to increase the number of high-quality pre-K centers by providing operators with workforce development, training, and other support. The administration says that about 57% of city-funded seats were at providers ranked three or four stars in 2017 — that number is now 95%.

While PHLpreK is available to all children, regardless of income, officials said this week that it’s a continuing challenge to expand access in an equitable way.

» READ MORE: How to find free pre-K in Philadelphia

In its search for providers each year, the city’s Office of Children and Families lists “priority” zip codes that have a low number of publicly funded pre-K seats or a high number of children in poverty.

This fall, the city listed 16 priority zip codes. In 11 of those zip codes, there’s a low number of seats, meaning there are 10 or more children under 5 years old per seat. And two zip codes — 19137 in Bridesburg and 19127 in Manayunk — had no publicly funded pre-K seats, according to the city.

That’s an improvement over just two years ago, when the city said there were five neighborhoods without publicly funded seats.

There are several barriers to expanding PHLpreK.

The city budget, currently flush with cash, may tighten in the coming year as the city prepares for federal pandemic relief dollars to be exhausted. In addition, early childhood education centers have experienced high levels of staff turnover and teacher shortages, particularly since the pandemic.

Parker, a former City Council member who voted in favor of the beverage tax, said repeatedly on the campaign trail that she supports the programs it funds, including PHLpreK. During a May interview with the child welfare nonprofit Children First, Parker said her administration will look to increase the number of available seats and sees raising the salaries of educators as a critical step.

“So I’m going to the public sector, the private sector, local, state, and federal government to secure funding,” she said.

Donna Cooper, executive director of Children First, said pre-K was a win for Kenney and that the Parker administration has a clear path to expansion.

”The takeaway is when you lead, you can succeed,” Cooper said. “Jim Kenney chose to step forward on pre-K. The next mayor’s going to have to step forward on facilities, on funding.”

Not mentioned during Kenney’s news conference this week was that his beverage tax also paid for 20 so-called community schools — district schools selected to receive a dedicated city-paid worker embedded in their building solely to assess needs, find community partnerships, and provide supports for students and families that remove barriers to learning.

For the schools that received the supports, some community schools liaison worked on food access for families; others focused on job opportunities for students. But while some made deep community connections and thrived, others were hampered by personnel changes and other complications.

The vision articulated by Kenney and City Council President Darrell L. Clarke — who was especially bullish on community schools — never reached full execution.

Kenney and Clarke initially pledged 25 community schools in the first four years. The city managed 20 in eight years.