Day Nursery Gets $20 Million Of $22.5 Million Grant Money From Lilly Endowment For Pre-K Education

I've been telling you all along that this entire early childhood education initiative pushed by Gov. Mike Pence and Mayor Greg Ballard with the strong backing of Eli Lilly was all about steering money to particular providers of early childhood education. As it turns out, there is only one entity that Lilly is interested in supporting. That would be the Day Nursery as it has always been known as until it recently started calling itself Early Learning Indiana. "Early Learning Indiana — formerly Day Nursery Association — will get $20 million to increase the number of programs it offers statewide and improve their quality, according to a news release from Lilly," the Star's John Tuohy reports. An additional $2.5 million grant is being awarded to United Way of Central Indiana, the nonprofit Mayor Ballard intends to rely upon to dole out the $5 million a year he wants to pass out to providers of early childhood education in Marion County for children of low-income parents. United Way will likely use most of that money for administrative costs associated with the program.

As only Advance Indiana reported, the wife of Star political columnist Matt Tully, Valerie Tully, chairs Day Nursery Association of Indiana, a fact he failed to disclose when he used his political column to endlessly advocate for Ballard's plan to eliminate the homestead property tax credit to provide $5 million a year in funding for pre-K education. Mayor Ballard's deputy mayor of education, Jason Kloth, also serves on Day Nursery's Board of Directors with Tully's wife. Tully also neglected to mention that his wife is employed as an executive at Eli Lilly, the same company that has made such a large public commitment to funding pre-K education. Tully insisted that there was no problem in not disclosing his wife's service chairing the Day Nursery's board of directors because she served in a volunteer capacity for the organization. "We have absolutely no financial interest in Day Nursery," he wrote in an e-mail to Advance Indiana. "The volunteering is a huge time commitment for her, but she does it gladly." He also defended his decision not to mention the fact that his wife worked for Eli Lilly because he ran it past his bosses at the Star who were comfortable with him writing about the subject despite Lilly's role in advocating for the program.

Now you know the rest of the story. The Star's Matt Tully and editorial manager, Tim Swarens, have been highly critical of any public official who dares to oppose city funding for Mayor Ballard's proposed pre-K spending program despite the fact that the City lacks resources as it is to fund basic services. The two have made quite clear that the news and editorial pages of the Indianapolis Star will be used to brandish anyone who stands in the way of approving Ballard's plan to provide $5 million a year in city tax dollars to the pre-K initiative, ignoring the fact that education is not the constitutional or statutory responsibility of municipal government in Indiana. Their funding plan would actually cut funding for Marion County's public schools by about $5 million a year by eliminating the homestead credit. Currently, Head Start in Indianapolis is provided exclusively by Family Development Services, which operates nine pre-K learning centers throughout the county. It spends about $16 million a year providing services to about 2,500 low-income children, all of which is funded by the federal government. FDS has attained state and national accreditation for its learning centers. Apparently, the Pence/Ballard/Lilly plan is to start up a competing program using the Day Nursery as an exclusive provider to compete against current Head Start programs.

UPDATE: So more details about the $20 million grant indicate that none of the $20 million being doled out to Day Nursery will actually be used to provide scholarships to low-income children to attend pre-K; rather, Day Nursery will supposedly be using this windfall of money to help other pre-K providers improve their curricula, build classrooms, educate parents and support professional development for teachers.