Democratic Reps. Joaquin Castro of Texas, Katherine Clark of Massachusetts and Republican Reps. Tom Cole of Oklahoma and Richard Hanna of New York hosted an event Thursday launching what they called the first Congressional Pre-K Caucus.
But the real stars of the show were Cookie Monster and Elmo, who made a trip from Sesame Street to Capitol Hill.
An honor to join Cookie Monster & many others at Capitol for launch of Congressional Pre-K Caucus. @NSBAComm pic.twitter.com/zlS8sqbg4C
— Tom Gentzel (@Tom_NSBA) April 15, 2016
Joined Elmo, Cookie Monster, and Reps. Hanna, Castro, Clark, and Cole to help launch the Congressional #PreKCaucus. High-quality early education sets our children up for long-term success. Proud to be a founding member of this important bipartisan caucus! A photo posted by Rep. Bobby Scott (@repbobbyscott) on Apr 14, 2016 at 3:37pm PDT
Conferring with Congressman Monster and Congressman Elmo on the new #PreKCaucus in Congress. pic.twitter.com/cXeZtV8cAx
— Rep Peter DeFazio (@RepPeterDeFazio) April 15, 2016
The four members of Congress are joint co-chairs of the caucus, which plans to bring “members of congress together to gain a deeper understanding of the benefits of early childhood education and promote policy recommendations to expand pre-K access for children throughout the country,” said an invitation to the kick-off.
The Dallas Morning News, which attended the event, reported Hanna as stating: ""There’s nothing about this issue that should be anyway partisan, and I don’t think that there is. The reality is once you know more about pre-K it’s impossible not to support it for every child in America. We need universal pre-K.”