As another school year begins, I find my Facebook feed clogged with pictures of people's kids heading off to their first days of school. Normally I browse, think how nice and then move on. However, lately I've been noticing a number of kids that are youngest than my oldest daughter headed off to their first days of preschool and it's making me mad.
Why? Well, in most parts of MA you can't start kindergarten until you're 5 by August 31st. So, for my daughter that means she can either do 2 years of preschool or start preschool when she's 4, almost 5 and then start kindergarten when she's 5, almost 6. Preschool isn't free in my town - or any other town for that matter - and I can't afford the tuition for 2 years of the same program. Because of that, she's only going for 1 year of preschool.
However, you can apparently go to free or a severely reduced price if you are on some form of assistance. Lovely.
I am sick and tired of seeing people on public assistance getting to send their kids to 2 years of preschool for free simply because they are low-income. Before they qualify for preschool they send them to early intervention programs. Speech therapy. All kinds of things for absolutely free. Meanwhile, my kids can only go to 1 year of preschool because I simply can't afford 2 years of tuition for each of them.
I'm middle class. We are struggling like everyone else, but because we aren't below some arbitrary threshold we get no assistance while it seems like everyone else that has made bad life decisions gets everything for free. I'm not talking about just education. I get that not everyone can afford college, though to be fair, it wasn't free for my husband and I either. We each came out with thousands upon thousands of dollars of loans. Between the two of us, we have about $150K in student loans to pay off.
The bad decisions I am referring to is having children out of wedlock - often multiple children. There are numerous women that I know that have delayed getting married because their combined income with their partner will disqualify them for benefits. So rather than saying, "I do", they simply live together. The woman qualifies for free health insurance, food stamps and everything else while the man supports the family the same way my husband supports our family. The difference is that we got married before having kids, so we don't qualify for anything.
How is that type of backwards policy building strong families? If anything it's encouraging people NOT to get married before having kids. It's encouraging broken homes, children out of wedlock and supplementing your income with government handouts.
I get that there are people who really need this type of assistance, but there are sooo many more who simply work the system to their advantage. Maybe if there were less takers and more givers, those of us who have done everything "right" won't have to struggle so much to pay for those who want everything for free.
Just a thought.
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