Calif. military families get preschool relief

[unhappycamper]

Calif. military families get preschool relief
By Gidget Fuentes - Staff writer
Posted : Friday Nov 30, 2007 19:06:10 EST

SAN DIEGO — Military families in California who live in privatized government housing will get a break from paying for preschool with a stopgap measure that will enable more of them to qualify for free state-subsidized care.

State officials enacted an emergency provision Nov. 29 that will exclude the monthly Basic Allowance for Housing that “public-private venture” residents receive from being counted as regular income in order to qualify for the preschool program. Families who qualify will be able to enroll their preschool-eligible children for the next semester, which begins in January.

The emergency measure “will lift a bureaucratic burden that was unwittingly placed on some of our military families, depriving them of quality preschool that was intended to serve them,” State Superintendent Jack O’Connell said in a statement. O’Connell joined local and Navy officials for a Nov. 29 signing ceremony at the Point Loma Naval Base in San Diego.

Existing state law includes the monthly BAH payments that are paid to PPV residents in the income used to determine someone’s eligibility for free preschool for their children. Housing allowances paid each month to PPV residents are listed on the service member’s leave-and-earnings statement, which California considers as income; the allowance in turn is paid to the private firm that manages the housing.

Under the measure, qualifying families will be able to send their child to the preschool at no cost, which will save them several hundred dollars each month, depending on their family size and income levels. Eligible families include active-duty military and activated Guard and Reserve members.

The move is expected to fill many seats that officials say have gone vacant in the past two years as neighborhoods transitioned to privatization and military families lost the subsidies — a trend that concerned advocates of preschool education.


Rest of article at: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2007/11/navy_california_preschool_071130/