New education chief hopes to expand pre-school programs, not budget

By Rob Moritz, Arkansas News Bureau

Pre-school programs could be made available all of Arkansas' 3- and 4-year-olds without additional state funding, the state's new education commissioner said today.

LITTLE ROCK — Pre-school programs could be made available to all of Arkansas’ 3- and 4-year-olds without additional state funding, the state’s new education commissioner said today.

Tom Kimbrell spent his first day as director of the state Department of Education meeting staff and attending a conference on the economic benefits of early childhood education.

In a speech at the Arkansas Economic Summit for Early Childhood, Kimbrell told more than 200 pre-school advocates that he hopes every child in Arkansas eventually has the opportunity to attend a pre-kindergarten program.

The Arkansas Better Chance program and its companion Arkansas Better Chance for School Success program serve more than 25,000 3- and 4-year-olds around the state.

The programs receive $111 million annually from the state and are available to children in low-income families.

Tonya Russell, director of the Child Care and Early Childhood Division in the state Department of Human Services, said later that 60 percent to 70 percent of all children eligible for pre-k programs in the state currently participate.

Kimbrell told reporters the pre-k programs could be made available to all children without additional state funding.

“I think the state has made a huge, huge … expenditure in pre-k,” he said. “I’m not sure the state needs to pour more money into it. We need to maintain the quality and maintain the flexibility with some of those state dollars to be able to do it.”

He said there are “lots of other things we can do out there” for funding, noting that schools could reshuffle funding they now get from the state for at-risk students.

“There are some things that can happen in schools currently with state money that can advance this program of pre-k education,” he said.

Kimbrell also said more local providers are offering pre-k programs and that needs to be encouraged.

Kimbrell succeeds Ken James, who resigned June 30 after five years as the state’s top education official to take a job with the educational organization America’s Choice.

The 47-year-old Kimbrell, a 25-year educator and a former superintendent of the Paragould and North Little Rock school districts, most recently was executive director of the Arkansas Association of Educational Administrators.

Earlier in the day, he was sworn in as state education commissioner by Secretary of State Charlie Daniels and spent some time visiting with staff at the Education Department.

“If there is anything immediate, my hope is there would be an attitude that will come from the staff that we truly are here to provide services, resources and help to schools,” Kimbrell said. “We do have some schools that are failing kids out there and what we do know is that some of those schools don’t know the answer to how to fix that.”

Since 2005, the state has taken over six school districts because of poor fiscal performance. Thirteen school districts are currently under a fiscal distress designation.