Apparently, preschool is just daycare.

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My daughter was born on October 5th, 2005.  She is a very smart little girl who can already count to 50, can write and spell her name and shocks me with all of the useless facts that she knows and retains. She can even count to 10 in Spanish and retains the spanish and sign language words that the Goodnight Show on Sprout teaches her.

At age 3, she was so bored at home and asked me to go to school, that I enrolled her in Gymboree Pre-School skills where she did learn a lot.  However, she got bored halfway through the year and even her teacher told me that she had to be in a more challenging school.

Unfortunately for us, the New Jersey State cut off date for Pre-School is October 1st; she misses it by just 4 days.  After getting her tested, finding out that she is on a 1st grader's level and fighting with/sending the results of those tests to the local board of education, we found out that there was absolutely no way she could have gotten into pre-school for the 2009/2010 school year. 

We tried to send her to Tutor Time, which is a preschool-esque class, but it ended up that wasn't challenging enough for her.  Her teacher there told me that she was too advanced and was getting bored very easily with the work they were doing.  Instead of wasting the $400 a month, I ended up taking her out of there and keeping her home for the rest of this year.  We got workbooks and did work by ourselves, I taught her a little more so she wouldn't be totally bored and she was learning more, but wanted to go to school so badly with her friends.

Now, we hear that New Jersey govorner, Chris Christie, is looking to cut state wide pre-school programs because he considers them "babysitting".  His exact quote was; “the government should babysit children?  It’s simply wrong.” He doesn't see the programs essential to children as a precursor to kindergarten.  Gorvorner Christie sees them as unnecessary and a waste of money, even though New Jersey public schools are among the best in the nation.  I talk to mom's around town who have kids in pre-school and they tell me that the pre-school program is amazing.  The kids actually learn a lot more than I did when I was in pre-school... Early childhood education has come a LONG way since the 80's.  

Govorner Christie is also wanting to make full day kindergarten classes into half day to cut government spending.  That is completely wrong to our children.  Just imagine the less they'll learn with just half day classes?  What will they accomplish in one year?  It will be so much less than what other children not in New Jersey would learn.  What good is that?!  

This is very frustrating to me since the fact that my daughter will be almost 6 years old before she even goes into school.  It's a disgrace since she is so smart and wants to go to school so badly so she can learn more than she already knows.  Not only my daughter, but if this goes through, it will effect about 9,500 children all throughout the many districts effected.  It's just plain wrong.

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