Latest news with #MigrantHeadStart
Yahoo
16-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Head Start from 1965 to today
This story was originally published on K-12 Dive. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily K-12 Dive newsletter. In its six decades of existence, Head Start has experienced highs, such as the addition of Early Head Start in 1994, and lows, like the disruptive COVID-19 pandemic. Here are notable events from Head Start's long history of educating preschoolers from low-income families. May 18, 1965 President Lyndon B. Johnson announces Project Head Start during a ceremony at the White House Rose Garden. The program launched that summer with 8 weeks of classes, serving more than 560,000 children and families across the country. The success of the summer program led to Congress approving a nine-month, school year initiative starting in the fall of 1965. The program was funded at $96.4 million. 1969 Management of Head Start moves from the Office of Economic Opportunity to the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare. The Migrant Head Start program is started to support farmworker families and their children. 1972 Congress amends the Economic Opportunity Act to expand Head Start program opportunities for children with disabilities. The legislation requires that at least 10% of Head Start's national enrollment include young children with disabilities. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which requires K-12 schools to serve students with disabilities, wouldn't become law until 1975. 1975 By the 10th anniversary of Head Start, the program has served 5.3 million children. During this year, about 79,000 employees are working in 9,400 centers in every state and territory. Head Start publishes its first performance standards detailing guidelines for serving children ages 3 to 5. 1982 Summer-only Head Start programs end. Head Start's total funded enrollment level reaches 395,800. 1987 Congress passes the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act. Head Start programs use the law's definition of homelessness to automatically enroll eligible children. 1990 Congress appropriates the largest year-over-year funding increase in Head Start history up to this year at $1.6 billion, or enough to enroll 621,078 children. 1994 Congress reauthorizes Head Start and creates the Early Head Start program to serve pregnant women, infants and toddlers. The fiscal year 1995 total Head Start budget is $3.53 billion for services to about 752,000 children. 1998 The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the successor agency to HEW, issues revised standards that include Early Head Start supports and the requirement that at least one teacher in each Head Start classroom must have a child development associate credential. 2003 The Head Start National Reporting System is implemented to standardize the collection of child outcomes for early literacy, language and number skills of all 4- and 5-year-olds enrolled in Head Start. 2007 Congress reauthorizes the program through the Improving Head Start for School Readiness Act, which aims to improve education staff qualifications and program monitoring. The law also increases accountability through strengthened monitoring and oversight. Funding for Head Start reaches $6.9 billion to serve 908,412 children. 2009 Through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, Congress appropriates an additional $2.1 billion for Head Start to serve another 61,000 children. The annual appropriation for Head Start in FY 2009 was $7.1 billion. 2015 Head Start celebrates its 50th anniversary. President Barack Obama proposes funding Head Start programs to operate on a full school day and full school year calendar. By Aug. 1, 2021, each Head Start program is required to provide at least 1,020 annual hours of planned class operations over at least eight months per year for at least 45% of Head Start center-based funded enrollment. 2020 The COVID-19 pandemic halts most in-person services, and Head Start begins offering a mix of virtual or remote child development services, along with other family supports. The programs that stayed open helped guide non-Head Start early childhood programs – such as child care centers and public preschools — on safety precautions so parents who were essential employees could stay on the job. 2024 Congress appropriates $12.3 billion for Head Start, an increase of $275 million over FY 2023. The program serves nearly 800,000 infants, toddlers and preschoolers. 2025 Massive workforce reductions at HHS led to the closing of five Office of Head Start regional offices: Boston, New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Seattle. Those offices are to be consolidated into the five remaining offices in Philadelphia, Atlanta, Dallas, Kansas City and Denver. The regional offices provide guidance on federal policy, training and technical assistance to Head Start providers. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Head Start avoids Trump's cuts, but advocates are ready to defend it: ‘There's too much good in this'
Tanya Stanton felt a sense of relief when she heard last week that the Trump administration seems to have reversed course on eliminating the Head Start early education program. She directs early learning programs at You Thrive, a Florida non-profit that provides Head Start services to approximately 1,100 children in the central part of the state. On Friday, the Trump administration released an updated 'skinny budget', which lays out the executive office's discretionary spending priorities. It doesn't contain a proposal to shut down Head Start, as mentioned in an administration memo obtained by the Associated Press in April. And that means thousands of families can breathe easier; the program served 833,000 low-income students nationwide in fiscal year 2022. Relief, however, does not mean that Stanton wants to lessen the pace of the advocacy that followed the announcement. 'If anything, this has taught us that you can't sit idle,' she said. Too much is at stake. Florida currently has over 45,000 children enrolled in 860 Head Start sites, the third highest number of students in the country behind California and Texas. In 2024, it received over $544m in federal funds. The budget may no longer target Head Start funding, but the administration closed half of the program's 10 regional offices and federal funding freezes have affected its programs, and it does propose eliminating other programs that Head Start families rely upon, including preschool development grants and community block grants. 'Until Congress passes and the president signs a final funding bill, we urge all Head Start supporters to continue advocating for the preservation of this vital program,' said Wanda Minick, Florida Head Start Association's executive director. For You Thrive's Stanton, it has been a surprise to realize how little many Americans understand the full impact and scope of the program. Head Start has served 39 million children and families since its inception in 1965, according to government statistics. At its most basic level, Head Start provides free childcare in a nation where households can pay more on average for childcare than on their housing. Access to childcare has a major economic impact on families and communities, since a US Chamber of Commerce study finds that states can lose up to $1bn a year when parents and guardians can't find or afford childcare. That is not even counting the hundreds of thousands of Head Start employees, whose possible job losses would also have ripple effects on their households and communities. Head Start is actually multiple programs that do much more than education and childcare. Early Head Start is for infants to three-year-olds, and its staff work on parenting skills with families one-on-one. Children also receive medical care such as dental, vision and mental health screenings. Head Start serves kids from ages three to five, and there's also a Migrant Head Start for children of agricultural workers. Doing away with Head Start would have immediate effects for affected families and their greater communities, but could also have long-term – even generational – consequences, said child and family policy expert Elliot Haspel, author of Crawling Behind: America's Child Care Crisis and How to Fix It. He noted a 2022 study showing that the children of Head Start participants were more likely to graduate high school and enter college; less likely to be teen parents and enter the criminal justice system; and had higher self-esteem – all of which translated to a 6% to 11% increase in wages. In her book A Chance for Change: Head Start and Mississippi's Black Freedom Struggle, Emory University historian Crystal R Sanders examined the impact Head Start had on economic opportunity in civil rights-era Mississippi. Through the Child Development Grant of Mississippi (CDGM), which ran from 1965-68, 'federal money was going directly into the hands of working-class black people, something that had never happened in the state of Mississippi', Sanders said. CDGM parents had the opportunity to work and go back to school. Many earned a GED or high-school equivalency, and some pursued college degrees, which resulted in better-paying jobs and even home ownership. 'Head Start gave them a leg-up, too,' Sanders said. 'That's still true today.' For Lee Ann Vega, education manager at You Thrive, threats to Head Start are not just devastating – they're personal. 'It makes me sad for not only my families, but it makes me so sad for the children,' she said. Vega, 51, has Head Start to thank not only for a job but also for setting her on the right path in life. She and her brother were enrolled in Head Start after her mother abandoned the family due to substance abuse, and her father was working three jobs. The support she received inspires her passion for helping other children. 'There's so many days that I wake up and I thank God for allowing me to be a part of this process. Because Head Start works,' she said. Stanton of You Thrive said: 'We are here to help the families achieve self-sufficiency.' To achieve this, staff work one-on-one with families to establish personalized goals. For some families, it means locating temporary or permanent housing. For some, it means entering higher education or learning new technical skills. 'Some of them may not even know how to navigate on a laptop or computer,' Stanton said. Sometimes this leads to a job at Head Start itself, where former parents make up more than 20% of the program's workforce. And while childcare as a whole pays low wages, Stanton noted that Head Start's regulations, in a change made under the Biden administration, require that teachers earn as much as local public preschool or kindergarten teachers. 'Head Start is an economic boon for communities, whether it's the jobs it creates at those centers or the jobs that allow Head Start parents to work,' said Sanders, the Emory historian. The Trump administration budget proposal from April stated that eliminating Head Start aligned with its 'goals of returning control of education to the states and increasing parental control'. That argument, Sanders said, 'would suggest that they are actually not familiar with Head Start because Head Start prioritizes parental involvement'. Head Start standards require each agency to include parents on policy councils that decide or approve everything from enrollment and curriculum criteria to staffing. Tocra Waters is co-president of the policy council at Verner Early Learning Center in Asheville, North Carolina, where her three-year-old son Sincere has been enrolled in the county's only Early Head Start program since the summer of 2023. The program provided crucial support at an unsettled time in her life. Waters and her two children had transitioned to a new home after spending time in a shelter, where Waters had gone after leaving an abusive partner. Sincere was 'closed off' around people he didn't know, she said. In home-based visits, Waters learned how to set boundaries and rules for Sincere, while he learned colors and improved his motor skills. Now in a classroom at Verner, Sincere has made friends and interacts more with others in all settings. 'He'll say, 'Hi, morning, have a nice day,' and it just melts my heart,' Waters, 32, said. Waters has seen her own confidence increase through her participation in the policy council. She values 'that opportunity to be able to bring suggestions to the table … being an African American or a Black woman, in spaces, it seemed like we were not heard at times,' she said. She trusts Verner to care for her son and said its services 'allowed me to be able to provide for my kids and still chase my dreams'. Verner, a non-profit center, received $3.2m, or 60% of its $5.3 operating budget this year from Head Start funding to support 139 children. Although the administration's plans to eliminate Head Start funding gave CEO Marcia Whitney 'heart palpitations', she noted that 'we as an organization would not cease to exist' if funding disappeared. However, they would start charging tuition for many of its programs, a move that would price out most of their Early Head Start families and force some to leave their jobs to stay at home with their children. The situation is far more critical for centers like those run by You Thrive Florida, where 98% of their funding comes from Head Start; the rest comes from the United Way and the state. While the Trump administration said eliminating Head Start would allow state and local governments to have control over education, Haspel said 'states are absolutely not prepared to make that kind of shift'. He pointed out that states struggled to distribute pandemic stabilization grants to childcare programs because they lacked the staff and technological infrastructure to transfer funds as quickly and easily as the federal government. According to Minick, Florida would need to invest $688m to replace Head Start services. Florida already has its own version of Early Head Start, the School Readiness program. But it has stricter eligibility requirements; parents must work up to 20 hours a week and contribute co-pays. Minick estimates that those rules mean that only 13,000 of the more than 40,000 students in Head Start could now enroll (the state's voluntary pre-kindergarten program currently has no waiting list). And Florida's legislature is considering slashing its funding for state-run early learning programs by up to 8%. For Sanders, the question is less whether the state governments can administer these programs but whether they are willing to do so, especially in states with a history of educational and racial segregation. 'Historically, when we have left complete control of education to states, that has created inequality,' she said. When the CDGM received federal funding as one of the nation's first Head Start programs, she noted, 'the segregationist governor of Mississippi could not take away money from working-class Black people'. Even with an annual budget of $12bn, Head Start at best serves half of eligible children. 'I don't envision Americans truly saving any money by doing away with Head Start,' because it is so underfunded, Sanders said. Because the program has enjoyed bipartisan support since its inception, Haspel 'would be somewhat surprised' if Congress agreed to the administration's initial request to eliminate it completely. The American Civil Liberties Union sued the government on 28 April on behalf of a coalition of Head Start providers and parents, alleging that the executive branch does not have the power to impact Head Start's funding without congressional approval. Stanton, for one, is hopeful. Longtime Head Start staff across the nation – people who have worked for the program for 30 or 40 years – told her that they have experienced tough moments like this before, though perhaps not of this magnitude. 'I'm just a believer. I'm like, there's too much good in this,' she said.
