For Kayla Coulter, a single mother with two young children, life is hectic enough. Thankfully, the Pima Early Education Program Scholarships (PEEPS) have made it slightly more manageable — at least financially.
Coulter, 33, said being able to send her daughter Pyper, 5, to preschool for free has been a blessing. Pyper, like older brother Kayos, 7, before her, attends the Emily Meschter Early Learning Center in Pima County’s Flowing Wells Unified School District.
The learning center, which offers only preschool classes for children ages 3 to 5, is one of more than 150 preschool programs in Pima County that benefit from PEEPS, a program that receives most of its funding from federal COVID-19 relief funds.
“PEEPS has definitely helped us financially,” said Coulter, a teacher at a different Flowing Wells district school. “Pyper can go to preschool and we don’t have to worry about having financial issues. Having her at this school saves me $400 to $500 a month.
“That means we can do other activities. For example, we were able to go to the Flandrau Science Center and Planetarium at the University of Arizona. It also helps with little things. They needed new shoes, so I was able to buy those without having to worry about other expenses.”
Preschools in the Tucson area cost an average of $800 a month per child. For one child, that comes out to $9,600 over 12 months.
As of March 31, 2022, 685 children from financially eligible families were receiving assistance from PEEPS to send their children to high-quality preschools in Pima County. That’s an estimated combined savings of $548,000 a month that doesn’t have to come out of the pockets of local families.
Funding for Year 1 of PEEPS, which recently concluded, was provided by Pima County’s share of Federal American Rescue Plan Act funding; the city of Tucson; the towns of Marana and Oro Valley; and participating school districts.
Beyond the financial savings for families, PEEPS has a more important mission: molding the next generation of learners by giving them a solid educational base.
“The PEEPS program is an opportunity for the families in Pima County to have their young children in a high-quality early childhood program,” said Susan Shinn, the director of Early Learning Programs in the Flowing Wells district. “In a high-quality program, children develop positive relationships with each other and their teachers.
“A large body of research has demonstrated the critical importance of the first three years of a child’s life. The experiences and interactions children have in these early years significantly affects brain development and helps to establish the foundation for future learning. Each teacher’s warm and responsive interactions, and knowledge of child development and learning, create a nurturing and stable environment. This enables the development of secure attachments between child and teacher, which can have lifelong impacts on learning, cognition, and self-regulation.”
Pyper’s teacher, Jessica Jankowski-Gallo, echoed some of Shinn’s points.
“Preschool is important because that’s when children are learning how to think, how to solve problems and how to work alongside other people,” Jankowski-Gallo said. “They have time to explore and be creative. They have the opportunity to explore more life skills in a high-quality, nurturing environment before promoting into primary school.”
Coulter says the impact of Pyper’s early education experience is evident every day.
“She has a more vivid imagination,” Coulter said of her daughter. “She can tell you stories about things that happened at school with pretty good details.”
The impact of PEEPS funding is seen in other areas as well. For example, Shinn said PEEPS funds have made it possible for the district to expand its preschool program by two full classrooms, enough to serve 38 more pupils, during the 2022-23 school year. That expansion has also made it possible for the district to offer preschool to families who live outside the district’s boundaries, Shinn said.
Furthermore, PEEPS funds have given the district the flexibility to hire two more full-time preschool educators and to support the purchases of educational materials for students.
Shinn added that PEEPS funding is also helping to pay for the tuition of three future educators as they make their way through college.
When one realizes that other school districts and scores of families across Pima County are also benefiting from PEEPS funding, it’s easy to conclude that the program is having a significant impact on the community. More importantly, that impact will be seen for years to come as today’s preschoolers become tomorrow’s workers, taxpayers and leaders.
