By NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — One of the main differences between incumbent Democrat Jason Probst and Republican John Whitesel is their position on education, particularly pre-K.
"I think we really need to focus at getting the money into the classroom," Whitesel said. "I know, down in Haven, we spend approximately $15,000 per student and we have a lot of extra programs, like three year old and four year old pre-K, that really have shown no benefit past the third grade. You talk to a third grade teacher, they can't tell you if a student has been in three year old pre-K or four year old pre-K or not. When I talked to the people that were wanting to push the program into our school district, what they kept talking about was kindergarten readiness, kindergarten readiness and I gave them a month to come back to me with any study that showed there was any benefit beyond the third grade and they couldn't come up with a single study that showed that. What they said was, well, you know, it might help people move to the district because it will provide free child care."
Probst did cite a study in his defense of the programs, that started with a group of African American children in Ypsilanti, Michigan in the 1960s.
"There's a Federal Reserve study that was done in the 1960s called the Perry School Project where they put kids into a quality, pre-K, early education program and then they followed them throughout school and then they went and found these kids when they were 27 years old and found that, over non-participants in this program, so the control group, they were less likely to have been arrested and had run-ins with the law, they were less likely to suffer from substance abuse, and they made, on average, $2000 a month more than non-participants."
According to the Kansas Department of Education's Data Central, for the latest year where the data is available, the 2018-2019 school year, the ethnic make-up of the K-12 population in the state was 63.81% White, 20.07% Hispanic, 6.88% African American and 9.24% Other. Hutchinson USD 308 was 66.10% White, 21.46% Hispanic, 3.90% African American and 8.54% Other. Nickerson-South Hutchinson USD 309 was 84.90% White, 7.73% Hispanic, 2.60% African American and 4.77% Other. Haven USD 312 was 88.56% White, 6.20% Hispanic, 0.73% African American and 4.50% Other.
Probst and Whitesel will face off November 3.