Business leaders in Minnesota who had championed the expansion of existing preschool programs to prepare low-income children for kindergarten have gotten the green light from the state legislature to proceed, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports.

As part of an education bill signed into law by Governor Tim Pawlenty last week, state legislators authorized creation of the Minnesota Early Learning Foundation and provided $1 million in seed money to study and expand the best preschool education models in the state. Cargill, a Minneapolis-based producer of agricultural and financial services which increasingly has focused its philanthropy on disadvantaged children, announced that it would donate $1 million to the initiative — a sum that will be matched by the Minneapolis-based McKnight Foundation. Meanwhile, the Greater Twin Cities United Way announced that it would contribute $500,000 to the effort.

While the state of Minnesota spends roughly 40 percent of its budget on primary and secondary education, less than 1 percent of that is devoted to preschool education. Partly as a result of lobbying by companies based in the state and by Ready 4K — a coalition of early-education providers, politicians, business people, and community organizations — the governor and legislature also rescinded nearly $10 million in funding cuts to Head Start and Early Childhood Family Education.

"We're trying to transform the issue from one of public expense to public investment," said Rob Johnson, an executive with Cargill and head of the business and nonprofit task force that recommended the establishment of the public-private fund. "That's been a very powerful argument with respect to early learning. Most of us believe we need to develop more cost-effective ways to deliver an educational service. That gets real traction with people in the business community."