History of Georgia's Pre-K Program

During Georgia’s 1990 gubernatorial race, candidate Zell Miller proposed creating the Georgia Lottery for Education, committing to the Georgia electorate that all funds would be used to supplement – not supplant – existing educational programs: specifically, a preschool program and college scholarship initiative. Georgia voters elected Miller as governor and in 1992 passed the lottery referendum.

Georgia’s Pre-K began as a pilot program serving at-risk four-year-old children and their families at 20 sites in 1992. Initially, state funds paid for the program. The first lottery funds were used in 1993-94 to provide prekindergarten programs for at-risk four-year-old children.

Because of the lottery’s success, in September 1995 the program was universally opened to all eligible four-year-old children, not just those from at-risk families. During this time, the private child care industry became an integral part of the program, allowing it to expand quickly without using funds for new or expanding facilities. A public/private partnership of this magnitude was a first in Georgia and the nation.

In March 1996, the Georgia General Assembly created the Office of School Readiness (OSR) to be a one-stop children’s department administering Georgia’s Pre-K Program, federal nutrition programs, and certain early intervention services.

The Pre-K program continued to expand under OSR with major improvements in program quality, implementation of learning goals and quality standards, simplified administrative requirements, and intense training initiatives. By the tenth anniversary of Georgia’s Pre-K Program, more than half a million children had participated in the lottery funded program.

In 2004, OSR officially became Bright from the Start: Georgia Department of Early Care and Learning (DECAL) when the Georgia General Assembly passed Senate Bill 456. The Pre-K program continued to grow each year reaching a milestone during the 2009-2010 school year when Georgia became the first state in the nation to serve more than one million children in a voluntary, universal, lottery-funded Pre-K program. However, in response to the country’s economic recession, class size in the Pre-K program increased from 20 to 22 children in the 2011-2012 school year and remained there until Governor Brian Kemp and the Georgia General Assembly restored Pre-K funding in 2024. This increased investment made it possible to reduce class size back to 20 children and fund other significant improvements to the program.

Political will, as demonstrated by the involvement of Governor Miller in the beginning and Governors and policy makers since, AND public will, as demonstrated by the millions of families positively benefiting from the program, are reasons Georgia’s Pre-K Program has become the most successful prekindergarten effort in the nation.

Since its inception, Georgia’s Pre-K Program has consistently grown in quality and in the number of children served and evolved in response to the state’s and families’ needs.