Prep 82

Preposition 82

One of the LA Times articles mentions that a mother from middle class family had to wait overnight in her car in order to get her son enrolled in public preschool. Since there are too few public preschools available in California, This often happened. Facing the reality, Rob Reiner, one of the Hollywood filmmakers, who also chairs First 5 California, the state children and families, initiated more money for children's program. His initiative or preposition 82 basically establishes a right for all four-year old children to attend public preschool regardless family's income. And it will be supported by 1.7% tax on individual income above $400,000 annually and $800,000 for couples. Due to small percentage of public preschools are available in California State, they make strict restriction about who is going to be qualified to attend public preschools regarding family's income. This problem caused a lot of four-year old children, especially those who come from middle class family, are not able to attend preschool because some of them are not qualified to attend public preschool nor have enough money to afford private preschool tuition's fee. Besides, California is lagging education compared to other states and there are too few qualified teachers and too little public subsidy funds to go around. I do not think that initiative process is the best way to solve this problem. It is such a wasting time when they actually have to go to down the street and ask people to vote for them. Besides a lot of people do not truly understand what the initiative is all about, they just saw the ads and vote without knowing the real problem. I think the legislation would offer a better solution because the legislatures know our state's condition and they also bring in teachers and analysts before they make decision.

The proponents of this initiative are mostly from low and middle class family. They believe by passing this initiative, children will be more proficient in reading and they will do a lot better in their next level of education. Moreover they will end up graduate from high school, attend college, and they will succeed in their future. In addition, by attending preschool, it would decrease the rate of dropping out of school or involving in criminal activities later in child's life. Research also shows that early education and intervention for children with special needs in preschool reduces the need for monthly costly special education services later on. In order to appeal the electorate, we can use commercial, which talks about most people are worried about California government in the future and kids are our next generation, we want them to be successful and improve the California government in the future. Also we can give the electorate evidences or facts that large number of children from middle class family can not go to public preschool because some of them do not qualified and they can not afford the private preschool's fee either. And those children more likely would not be as proficient as those who went to preschool and they will end up dropping out of school later on.

The opponents of this initiative are mostly from anti-tax payers, upper class citizens, and those whose jobs involve in private preschool businesses. Those who involve in private preschool business, believe by passing this initiative, it would impact and put pressure in private school business. State would make funded public preschools available to everyone, even those who could afford existing private preschools. In order to appeal the electorate we can tell them the negative effects of this initiative. One of the negative effects is this action would cause private preschools out of business and leaves the state. Besides the tax-payers group have zero credibility on education's