Not all First 5 grants are helping kids -
Carrie Sturrock, Chronicle Staff Writer

******************************

 

Not all First 5 grants are helping poor kids Carrie Sturrock, Chronicle
Staff Writer

Saturday, April 19, 2008

Scores of savvy San Francisco parents have tapped a pot of taxpayer dollars
for everything from children's ice skating lessons and Monterey Bay Aquarium
field trips to supplies for Halloween parties and chartered buses to the
Jelly Belly factory in Fairfield.

Whether rich or poor, applicants can get up to $11,000 over three years for
all kinds of activities from First 5 San Francisco, a local agency charged
with distributing Proposition 10 tobacco tax revenue to promote early
childhood development.

Last year, about $564 million in Prop. 10 revenue was distributed by the
state and its 58 county First 5 commissions, which have wide discretion over
how the money is used. San Francisco's commission receives about $9 million
annually and uses $200,000 each year to fund its unique Parent Action Grants
program, which began in 2001.

The goal of Parent Action Grants, say First 5 San Francisco administrators,
is to build "parent leadership" and teach them how to advocate for their
children.

A sampling of the grants:

-- "Multi-Family First Time Camping Experience" included a camping lesson
and overnight trip to Big Sur for six families.

-- "Couples Travel and Learn Together" included an overnight stay at the
Four Points Sheraton in Pleasanton, where couples from Chinatown took
marriage workshops. It also included $250 in Target gift cards.

-- "Families of La Piccola Scuola Italiana" included holiday party space
rental and the purchase of a Babbo Natale (Italian version of Santa Claus)
costume.

"We really want to engage parents and involve parents in raising their
children from birth to age 5 and help them build leadership and hope that
transfers to being involved in the PTA and getting involved in the
community," said Laurel Kloomok, executive director of First 5 San
Francisco.

Families vanishing
She said strengthening community is a major goal because San Francisco is
losing its families. Children younger than 18 made up 22 percent of the
city's population in 1970, compared with just under 15 percent in 2006.

But UC Berkeley Professor Bruce Fuller, a widely quoted expert on public
policy issues, argues that's not what voters intended when they approved
Prop. 10 in 1998 and boosted the cigarette tax by 50 cents a pack. He thinks
the money should help low-income children in the most effective way
possible. It doesn't sound to him like individual parent grants do that.

"Rob Reiner sold this as a way to help kids from low-income (families) -
zero to 5 - have better futures," said Fuller. "I'm sympathetic that we have
to figure out ways to hold onto the middle class in San Francisco, but ...
holding onto the middle class is not a mission of First 5."

Diverting the money
Republican state Sen. Dave Cox of Fair Oaks is more sweeping in his
criticism of First 5. He previously got the state program audited and now
thinks voters should be asked to redirect First 5's hundreds of millions of
dollars into the general fund for children's health insurance. So far, Cox
said, he hasn't gotten much support from colleagues in Sacramento, noting
that it's not politically popular to criticize a program that distributes so
much money statewide.

Last year, about $564 million in Prop. 10 revenue was distributed to the
state and its 58 county First 5 commissions, with San Francisco's receiving
$9 million. The county commissions have wide discretion in how to spend
their share - funding everything from preschool programs to children's
health care initiatives.

For San Francisco parents in the know, it's possible to get Parent Action
Grants of up to $3,000 the first year and up to $4,000 for each of the next
two. Personal income doesn't matter because the program isn't based on
financial need.

According to Elaine Wang, civic engagement program officer at First 5 San
Francisco, the Parent Action Grants program received 136 applications from
parents and organizations this past year. It gave out 36 "regular" grants of
$3,000 each and 20 "starter" grants of $1,500 each. Groups must reapply each
year.

Several of the San Francisco parents who won grants created projects to
benefit the community, posting flyers for musical, theatrical and art
events. Other grants went to small, insular parent groups.

Playing on Potrero Hill
Beth Freeman, an associate professor of English at UC Davis, heard about the
grant from a friend and requested one for her Potrero Hill play group of
middle- to upper-middle-income families in an application titled "Potrero
Hill Toddler Play Group." They hosted parenting lectures on positive
discipline and potty training, art projects, a field trip to the Crissy
Field Center, an Easter egg hunt, a Halloween party and a toddler dance
party.

The activities strengthened the bonds within the group and created a greater
sense of community, which can be a difficult thing to find in a city,
Freeman said. While she was grateful for the grant and its positive impact,
she did feel uncomfortable knowing the funding came from a cigarette tax,
which is regressive.

"It's taxing something that's being marketed more at lower-income people and
consumed by lower-income people and redistributing it in ways that aren't
attentive to income," she said. "And that might be a moral dilemma. ... I'm
glad we got it - it did good things for us. On a personal level, I did
think, 'How strange that they don't require you to be needs-based.' "

Nagging concerns
Michelle Lever, who won the grant for the Italian immersion preschool her
children attend, said her group discussed whether others might benefit more
from the funds.

"If people can afford to pay 5 or 10 bucks to do something, why would you
get the Parent Action Grant, but it's more than that, right?" she said. It's
an "opportunity to learn leadership skills ... and interact with parents in
a different way on behalf of their children in the community."

Annemarie Kurpinsky won a grant for a group of a dozen women to do a project
on gardening and healthy eating called "From Garden to Table." The kids grow
their own planter garden and learn that food doesn't originate in a grocery
store.

Without the grant, she wouldn't have taken her son to a private class at the
zoo on how animals eat, nor would she have paid for the cooking class her
group took. The grant process, she said, is elaborate and time-consuming and
anyone willing to go through that should get the money, no matter what their
income level.

"Even though we're well-educated enough to apply for the grant and carry it
out doesn't mean we have the financial resources to do this on our own," she
said. "Families that are willing to go through the process - regardless of
income - should be allowed to have it."