And This One Belongs to the Reds: Election Results 2014

“And this one belongs to the Reds.” If Cincinnati Reds announcer Marty Brennaman had been calling the election results this week, his trademark phrase would have been right on the money as the (red) Republicans generally defeated the (blue) Democrats, here in Ohio and Kentucky as well as across the nation.

While the pundits dissect the local, state and national results, I thought I’d take a look to see what the impact may be on early childhood education in Ohio and Kentucky.

What impact could the 2014 election have on early childhood education?

Locally there is hopeful news for eventual preschool promise ballot initiatives in Cincinnati and Montgomery County. By fairly wide margins, taxpayers were very willing to support and even increase tax initiatives for things they think are important such as schools, social services and even iconic buildings.

And preschool initiatives fared well in two other major cities, Seattle and Denver where measures passed to expand the quality and access to preschool. Denver’s preschool sales tax will increase while Seattle’s property tax is new. Both provide lessons for us locally.

At the state level Ohio re-elected Governor Kasich. Early childhood education has fared very well under the Governor’s leadership, and the Children’s Caucus, lead by Senator Peggy Lehner (R-Senate District 6) and Representative Michael Henne (R-House District 40) from Dayton, and Representative Denise Driehaus (D-House District 31) from my own district in Cincinnati have pledged to work hard to expand access and quality of preschool, particularly for children from lower-income families. All three were re-elected. I expect to see even more progress in early childhood education at the state level over the next few years.

Nationally, although President Obama has laid out a comprehensive early childhood initiative, we have a majority party now dominating both Houses of Congress that is extremely unlikely to move ahead with any meaningful support in early childhood education. Despite what is otherwise a bi-partisan issue (see Ohio), I don’t expect to see anything other than small steps out of Washington.

Two (local and state) out of three (federal) bodes well for the future of public support for improving quality, affordability and accessibility of early childhood education.