LA Unified's School Readiness and Language Development Program is designed to prepare low-income children for kindergarten. It's free to their families at a cost to the District of $36 million a year. The full budget is $7.3 billion, but Superintendent Ramon Cortines has called for cutting the program to save money. Some 10,000 kids could be affected. The elected board is debating the cut, faced by one audience wearing yellow T-shirts with the words, "College Begins in Pre-K." UC Berkeley professor Bruce Fuller is author of Standardized Childhood: The Political and Cultural Struggle for Early Education.
KCRW
