Georgia Pre-Kindergarten

The Importance of Early Learning

Georgia Pre-K Program is a partnership between public schools, private licensed child care centers and DECAL.

GCCA strongly advocates for full investment in this lottery funded program to ensure positive child outcomes and future academic success. GCCA also supports full funding to protect businesses from underfunded, mandated program expenses that can reduce your center's program quality and result in business losses.

The general areas in which we lobby are:

  • Increase operational expenses to cover true program costs
  • Teacher salary levels commensurate with those in public school systems to ensure classroom stability and reduce turnover
  • Reduction of class size to 20, decreasing burden to teachers and program
  • Hold harmless on payment deductions for less than full roster counts
  • Maintain balance of private pre-k versus public centers and reduce public school system migration
  • Inclusion of Georgia Pre-K in future funding where HOPE Scholarship is considered (e.g., Casino Gambling or Parimutuel Betting)

GA Pre-K Provider Resources

Pre-K contracts are posted at the end of March each year for the upcoming year.

If you currently have Georgia Pre-K classrooms and are considering ADDING a new class for next year, we highly recommend you ask for an expansion class at the beginning when you resign your contracts.

DECAL often grants new classes mid-year once roster counts and waiting lists have been analyzed and they look FIRST at those providers who asked for a new class during the application process!