It costs much less to educate one child from pre-K and up, than to incarcerate that same child as an adult! In Oregon it costs taxpayers about $36,000 per year PER INMATE! Oregon's prison population always hovers around 14,000. Do that math. Cost of incarceration and prison population varies by state. Oregon is at the low end of the stats, so think of what tax payers of other states are paying!
Voters are more likely to take money away from schools rather than the Department of Corrections. Think. Think. Think. Who is going to pay to incarcerate that child you didn't want to pay to educate? YOU ARE.
And when the fathers go to prison, leaving all the baby's mommas behind to raise the children alone, that's when programs like Head Start are necessary to help break the cycle of incarceration.
Head Start and other early childhood programs are not just for low income kids, but for developmentally delayed children as well. Reducing Head Start funds just further hurts the most vulnerable group in this country: low income, disabled/developmentally delayed children.
No comments:
Post a Comment