Several states now base their projected future prison needs upon their current child reading levels of children at grades three and four. In Georgia, it is fully 41 percent of these fourth graders that do not read at grade level. Further, we rank 49th in the nation in dropout rates. Seventy five percent of the unemployed are illiterate, as well as 60 percent of the prison population in Georgia. Bluntly put, low-reading skills are very expensive to us taxpayers! It costs us far more to repair what is broken, than to fix the problem at its sources.
I do not mean to argue minutia of numbers and statistics, or even search for or suggest blame. Our schools are great, as are our teachers and administrators. The point is, no matter how we state it, the education of our children in this county, in this state, is in crisis. To this point, there is a literacy program now being championed by the Rotary Club that will put a book per month into the hands of every child under the age of five in Madison County.
Far too many of the children here entering kindergarten do not even know how to orient a book. Just south, in Morgan County, this very program has raised scores of the kindergarten readiness test from 46 percent to over 90 percent in five years time!
I have talked to both commissioners and candidates about their support of such a pre-k literacy program like this one. To their credit, the first response is always about not spending taxpayer monies or raising our taxes. That is appropriate, and I appreciate their desire to protect my tax money. However, let us put the issue into a cost-effective perspective.
The interest alone on a $5 million dollar jail loan, for one year, would pay for this program for eight years. The cost of housing one single inmate in Danielsville for one year is greater than the cost of providing this literacy program to all the roughly 1,800 kids under age five in the county for the same period.
This is not a charity. This is a basic and fundamental infrastructure issue. Like roads or bridges, jails and schools, the future of our county will depend on the strength of our children. You would not expect to maintain bridges with a fundraiser, nor pass the hat for a jail expansion. Isn’t it time to consider the county’s pre-k children as great a concern?
It would be silly of me to ask candidates for money in an election year. What I do ask is that they start looking down the road and consider a sincere endorsement of this program. And, if this programshows the results in our county that other counties have seen, we might consider this worthy of tax funding in the manner that all necessary infra-structure is funded.
(The books for pre-k children is one part of a four-pronged Madison County Rotary Club literacy project. For further information on this one aspect, see www.ferstfoundation.org)
Sincerely,
Tracy and Chris Young
Danielsville
