Michelle Gurgul has a good job as a dental hygienist, but the expense of private preschool for her daughter near her home in a Detroit suburb is beyond her budget.
“If we had to pay for a tuition-based program, she wouldn’t be going,” Gurgul said, who lives in Allen Park with her family. “It’s a big extra cost. Do you pay however many hundreds of dollars a month for preschool? Or do you pay for your car insurance?“
Timing worked in Gurgul’s favor: This summer, Michigan joined a handful of states in moving closer to offering “Universal Pre-K,” for four-year-olds. It’s an elusive and much-debated goal of advocates nationally, in which state-funded preschool is available and free for all families.
Michigan’s Democrat-majority state legislature this year passed an $85 million increase in preschool funding as a step toward Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s goal of free preschool for all by 2027. The increase covers the cost of 6,800 more preschool seats, both in schools and in private child care centers — meaning the state is now offering preschool to about half of its 118,000 four-year-olds.
The increase immediately allowed Gurgul’s daughter, 4, to attend one of two new classrooms the Allen Park Early Childhood Center opened this fall using the new state money. For Gurgul it’s a big win, even if Michigan still falls short of the 70% preschool enrollment experts define as true “universal” preschool.
“She’s excited every morning,” Gurgul said. “She wakes up and she jumps out of bed and asks, ‘Is it a school day?’ She’s excited to get up and go.”
For many, including Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden who pushed, but failed, to create preschool for every child, the early education programs are as vital to children’s academic and emotional development as kindergarten through high school.
But there’s no national consensus on what age school should start for children. Even kindergarten isn’t universal, with only 17 states requiring it for five-year-olds.
And there are still debates, often splitting along party lines, about preschool’s impact and whether it is worth the money.
An all-time high of 35% of four-year-olds nationally attended preschool in the 2022-23 school year. But only six states — Florida, Iowa, Oklahoma, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wisconsin — and Washington, D.C, have full, free preschool, according to the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University.
Several other states’ governors, including Illinois Gov. Elliot Pritzker, are increasing preschool eligibility each year, with a goal of full, free preschool.
Massachusetts Gov. Maureen Healey and the state’s legislature have offered free preschool in select “Gateway” cities that were once prosperous but have declined as industry moved away.
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis is trying to offer preschool to all four-year-olds, starting with those from low-income families and facing other challenges, such as homelessness. But lawsuits over which students had access to limited seats at the start and whether religious preschools can exclude kids from LGBTQ families have made progress a challenge.
And California Gov. Gavin Newsom has been inching toward preschool for all California four-year-olds by the 2025-26 school year.
NIEER reported this spring that 10 states are committed to adding universal preschool, but warned, “Most of those states are far from reaching that goal.”
“A key question for the future is whether states will increase investments enough to keep promises regarding program expansion and quality, including adequate pay for the workforce,” NIEER officials said this spring.
In Michigan, Gov. Whitmer, a Democrat, used her 2023 State of the State Address to call for expanding the state’s preschool program and making it free for all four-year olds by 2027.
“This investment will ensure children arrive at kindergarten ready to learn and saves their families upwards of $10,000 a year,” she said. “It helps parents, especially moms, go back to work. And it will launch hundreds more preschool classrooms across Michigan, supporting thousands of jobs.”
Last year, the state agreed to spend $72.4 million more to pay for five-day preschool instead of just four, and increased the family income limit for free preschool from 250% of the federal poverty level to 300%, or $93,000 for a family of four.
This year, Whitmer and the state legislature increased preschool funding by $85 million to add 6,800 new preschool seats. The state also made more middle-class families eligible by again relaxing state income limits to 400% of poverty level, or $124,800 for a family of four.
The increases passed over strong Republican opposition, as is common in state debates.
Republican State Rep. Nancy DeBoer said the bill, which also covered other school funding issues, diverts money from more important priorities, such as school safety or increasing funding for schools.
“Making our future generations a priority is common sense,” she told the House just before the bill passed. “Neglecting them is a new idea – one that will first hurt our kids and later the entire state. It doesn’t have to be this way.”
And Molly Macec, director of education policy for the right-leaning Mackinac Institute, blasted Whitmer’s plan as “wasteful, unnecessary, unfair” for adding higher-income students. Studies of preschool impact typically show greater effects for low-income students.
“Her PreK for All plan will do nothing more than subsidize preschool for wealthier families,” Macek wrote. “It’s a waste of time and money for the state to pay the bills of people who don’t need help.”
Though Whitmer and staff boast of Michigan having universal preschool, the state’s not there yet. By most definitions, universal preschool requires about 70% of the state’s four-year-olds to attend to count. That percentage below 100% allows for families who choose not to enroll their children.
Even if all 59,000 funded seats in Michigan are filled this year — a long shot because thousands of seats sit open each year — the state program would only serve about half of Michigan’s 118,000 four-year-olds.
Use of available seats has lagged, advocates believe, because of transportation issues, parents not knowing their children are eligible, and because preschool schedules don’t always line up with family work hours.
Jefftrey Cappizano, president of The Policy Equity Group, a non-profit that joined several others in creating a “roadmap” toward universal pre-K in Michigan, called the increases “a decent step” toward that goal. He and the report noted that, like many states, Michigan needs to add many more preschool seats as well as train more teachers to support such explosive growth.
Preschool and child care staffing is a challenge everywhere. After employees left, staffing levels nationally have only rebounded to pre-pandemic levels in the last year, according to federal data.
“You have to make sure that the infrastructure is there,” Cappizano said.
He and other preschool advocates also dismissed claims only affluent families benefit from the new income limits. Low-income students have priority under state law, as do those with other challenges such as having parents with low education levels or families that primarily speak another language.
And preschools that may serve the neediest students don’t always fill, so enrolling other students for those spots helps pay for the school and teachers.
Adding new seats also allows preschools to expand or new ones to open in areas that are low income.
“The expansion… isn’t just going to expand to the middle class,” said Eileen Storer-Smith, a program officer of the William K. Kellogg Foundation, which has made advancing preschool in Detroit a priority. “It’s going to expand to children who are eligible, where there just wasn’t a seat for them.”
Zina Davis, founder of the Children of the Rising Sun Empowerment Center, a child care and preschool center in Detroit, said the increases haven’t allowed her to expand yet, but will soon. She is planning a second center in the city and also looks forward to some three-year-olds at her center with higher-income families becoming eligible for state funding when they turn four.
The state funding changes also let her increase pay for her staff.
“It benefits everybody,” Davis said. “It benefits the programs for sustainability. It benefits the families, because now we have more slots available. And it also benefits the staff that are able to get livable wages.”
Patrick O’Donnell is a correspondent at The 74, covering the impact of the pandemic on America's education system.
