Credit: Lisa Fine/EdSource Today

Seattle voters have opted to heighten their property taxes to pay for a city-subsidized voluntary preschool plan for iii- and 4-year-olds.

The initiative, backed by the city's mayor and quango, creates a pilot programme that offers subsidized preschool on a sliding calibration, with costless tuition for families earning upward to 300 per centum of the federal poverty level.

"Information technology makes us a more equitable urban center," Mayor Ed Murray told the Seattle Times. "Information technology's an opportunity to actually practice something about the dramatic differences in instruction outcomes between children of colour and Caucasian children, poor children and children who come from wealthier families."

With President Obama's call for "universal preschool" – expanding access to preschool for all 4-year-olds regardless of income – stalling at the federal level, early childhood educational activity advocates are looking to build on the momentum happening at the local and state levels. Seattle at present joins cities including San Francisco, Denver and New York in expanding preschool opportunities for low-income children.

The tax hike creates a $58 million levy over four years, costing the owner of a Seattle home valued at $400,000 about $43 a year. City officials say the program volition ultimately help 2,000 children go a six-hour-a-day "loftier quality" preschool feel during the school year. The plan, which got 67 percent of the vote, shell out a competing wedlock-backed initiative to institute a $xv minimum wage for childcare workers.

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