Area law enforcement officials are calling on the state to boost its funding for early childhood education. Peoria County Sheriff Mike McCoy, State’s Attorney Jerry Brady and other police chiefs worked with the ‘Fight Crime, Invest In Kids’ group to release a report detailing the need for more funding. McCoy says more child care assistance money could help keep people out of jail in the future:
“It only makes sense to start your education as early as you can and starting that in pre-school where kids learn what’s right and wrong where they learn the dos and don’ts because we know as they get older, some of them are going to be in single-parent families or living with grandma. So if we can get them early with early childhood education, we hope to get those good habits embedded in them from the very start,” McCoy says.
The anti-crime group is asking the state to restore last year’s $25 million cut to the early education grant program. They say cuts in recent years have eliminated preschool for 350 young children in Peoria County.