It’s a typically insufferable summer afternoon in Central Florida — the kind where the sun seems to bounce off the pavement twice as hot as it hit.
Still, the streets of Parramore are filled with families all trekking through the heat in the same direction — toward a school.
It’s a big school filled with tiny people in tiny gowns.
For it’s graduation day at the Rosen Preschool in Parramore, a school hotelier Harris Rosen funds far from his string of resorts along International Drive.
Rosen, who built the state’s largest independent hotel chain, is well known for providing college scholarships, including to all the high school grads from the working-class Tangelo Park neighborhood near his hotels.
What many people don’t know is that Rosen spends twice as much on preschool as college.
He pioneered his preschool program more than 20 years ago in Tangelo. And last year, he expanded his pre-K investment to downtown Orlando, where a dozen classes of preschoolers were “graduating” on this Thursday afternoon in June.
Rosen said he invests so much in preschool because research shows that’s where you can make the biggest difference. About 90 percent of the human brain develops by the time kids are 5.
In other words: If you wait until kindergarten to start teaching them, you’ve waited too long.
“One thing I quickly learned is that there is as much intellectual talent in the underserved communities as there is in gated communities,” Rosen said. “And this investment pays off.”
Rosen is right. Yet Florida does it backwards. The state ranks near the bottom in pre-K funding and near the top in prisons. We spend $2,400 a year on each preschooler and $19,000 on each inmate.
We don’t prepare kids to learn or socialize. Then we act surprised when their lives go awry.
Kids who attend preschool make more money in life. They have more successful marriages. They’re less likely to be arrested and more likely to have advanced degrees.
Rosen developed a program that costs about $7,400 per student per year. That’s about what states with good pre-K programs spend.
Florida ranks 41st in per pupil spending.
If Rosen were his own state, he’d rank 10th.
Florida’s pre-K program pays for three hours of care and learning a day. Rosen kids can learn all day — and not just their ABC’s and 123’s, but all the basic building blocks of life: How to follow instructions, relate with other kids, use manners and think for themselves. They learn how to learn.
Rosen’s approach is better. Take it from Charles Dziuban, the director of UCF’s Research Initiative for Teaching Effectiveness, who bubbles with enthusiasm when he talks about studies that show Rosen’s Tangelo grads from years ago make more money and do better in life than other kids.
Dziuban says research makes it “abundantly clear that the first year of college begins at 2 years of age.”
Rosen, who has has invested about $50 million in education over the years, doesn’t understand why the state, and businesses, don’t invest more in this crucial first step. He argues it pays dividends for everyone.
“If you’re, say, an NBA team, now you have individuals who can buy season tickets,” he said. “If you’re a retailer, you have customers who buy more. I get better employees.”
That’s the return-on-investment argument anyway. Rosen, though, believes more companies should step up simply because it’s the right thing to do.
“I believe the private sector has a debt. They should get off their ass and demonstrate that they love America,” he said. “Instead, when we tell people what we’re doing here, most say: ‘That’s interesting. We’ll pass.'”
Rosen’s mission started in Tangelo Park with schools run by teachers in their own homes. Over the years, the community saw the difference.
Robert Allen, the retired principal at Tangelo Park Elementary, said more kids arrived at kindergarten ready to learn. “They went from talking about growing up to work in the service industry or as athletes to talking about being doctors and lawyers,” Allen said. “We chalk it up to this program.”
Also, the more Rosen invested in preschool, the less he needed to spend on college scholarships, because the kids could earn their own way.
Rosen wanted to expand that success to Parramore but keep some of the themes from Tangelo. So each classroom in the new Livingston Street location — part of a partnership with Orange County Public Schools and its new school there — is painted to look like a small home.
Inside each room are new computers — and qualified teachers.
That’s another departure from the state’s program. Florida pays so little for its pre-K program — $13.89 per student per day — that most providers can’t attract qualified teachers willing to work for as little as $10 an hour. They can make more money at theme parks.
Gov. Ron DeSantis claims to know the state’s pre-K program — which barely prepares half its graduates for kindergarten, according to the state’s own tests — is a sad shell of what it should be.
DeSantis says he’s looking for ideas and solutions. Assuming he’s serious, he should talk to Rosen.
