This is an opinion column

Alabama women are dying in childbirth at the third highest rate in the country. An unacceptable 36.4 per 100,000 live births.

A whopping 17.5 percent of Alabamians have no health insurance. The state is giving up federal funds for Medicaid Expansion because it was created by a black president, Barack Obama. North Carolina just became the 40th state to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act.

As they have for decades, our pupils still rank at the bottom nationally in reading and math.

Those figures are from the Alabama Department of Public Health, Cover Alabama Coalition and the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

US News sums up the dismal picture of our state by reporting that Alabama is 46th in the nation in overall rankings of education, health care, and economics.

And Gov Ivey is allocating $25 million for a Montgomery whitewater rafting park. What is she thinking?

I’m thinking the money could better be used to perk up a bright spot in Alabama. Our early childhood education PreK program has been praised nationally. It serves about 20,000 four year-olds, according to the National Institute for Early Education Research, at a cost of only $123 million. But that program serves only about 34 percent of our state’s four year-olds. Head Start funded by the federal government only serves 7 percent. And Alabama’s program doesn’t include three year-olds, who would also benefit immensely.

How many times do we have to consider how much the PreK program would help our people? The figures are clear. Youngsters in those programs are more likely to graduate from high school, go on to college, earn higher salaries. If we needed more statistics to convince us, they are also more likely to stay out of prison and off welfare.

What a return on our tax dollars! Do we really think a white-water rafting development is a better investment?

Jean Lufkin Bouler is a former education reporter for The Birmingham News and is the author of several nonfiction books.