There is a great book about advertising called "From the Guys Who bought you Pearl Harbor!" - the title is a failed pitch. Well I wonder if we are seeing a reprise of this.

As the questions from operators and parents rise, one thing is clear to me now. What is being proposed is to bring the full bureaucratic dead hand that has made school so ineffective in motivating staff and students to the early years. The Guys who brought you a school system that fails to engage 70% of our kids and that has made the vocation of teachers into a union job are running the show.

I make this statement because the details are more clear now. The operators are now in touch with the financial consultants. Here are a few points that are emerging from these talks:

• CE's will get paid more but will have no breaks or planning time in their day. The CE's will be working on an assembly line in effect. The best operators now plan lots of breaks in the day. If you have looked after small kids - you know what I am talking about. Nothing can be more draining. A truly high quality operation knows that they are working with humans not machines.

• All parent fees in the new centres are capped. So there is no way to generate additional revenue to cover the extras. So operators will be forced to cut corners wherever they can. There is no room at all in the budget.

• Food is to be taken out of the 21% administration fee which means nutrition will suffer. We now know that food habits are also learned at this age. We all know now that the obesity epidemic has been strongly influenced by the approach to cheap food in schools. So this decision alone condemns the operators to go to the bottom and the kids to remain stuck in the junk food trap.

All of this tells me that only the machine bureaucratic mind is at play here.

This is why the insistence on larger centres - all makes the bureaucracy easier. The result will be that there are very few centres in rural areas.

This is why the insistence on a central wait list administered by the bureaucracy - no real choice.

Here is where this will likely go:

• The best centres will go private - they will skim off all who can and will pay. In other markets the trend is clear. Parents will beggar themselves to find a quality place.

• In rural PEI, where there will be very few centres of any kind

• In Charlottetown and Summerside there will be some Centres - they will be the last resort

• Most of the vulnerable who are currently excluded will still have nothing

• War over licensing for the bureaucracy will have an unaccountable say on who gets licensed

• A few CE's will get a pay rise

• The opportunity will have been wasted. We will have a three tier system. Private where the choice and quality will reside. The Centres - "School" for the young and Nothing

Tell me why I am wrong! Please explain why I am wrong. I would love to be wrong.

It's easy to criticize - so later this week I will offer my ideas as to how we can do this in a way that will offer quality and choice and more. I want this to work.