Proposed Federal Changes May Affect HCS Head Start

This year, Head Start educators are not only helping parents and children work through the morning farewells. They are pondering the impact of changes the federal government announced last month.

Head Start is different from other child care programs because of its comprehensive services provided by social workers, nurses and mental health clinicians, said Holyoke Chicopee Springfield Head Start CEO Nicole Blais. These are the kind of services she worries would be in jeopardy from the proposed changes.

Asare, who has worked at HCS Head Start for almost three decades, said the program hasn’t changed much during that time.
“We’ve always had the student-teacher ratios in place,” she said standing in the midst of her classroom. “We’ve always had this comprehensive services with mental health, disabilities, family services — it’s always been there.”

Among the proposed changes announced last month: removing federal standards regarding how many students are assigned to a teacher so that state-set standards apply. The proposed rules also say teaching should be done in English only. The program would no longer be required to screen children for developmental delays.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said the changes will allow the program to offer almost a quarter million more slots nationwide.

While Massachusetts’ standards regarding teacher-student ratios are similar to current federal Head Start standards, that change alone could alter the tenor of the classroom. More students per teacher means less one-on-one time with each child, and because teachers would not be able to supervise as well, more accidents could happen, Asare said.

Up the stairs from the center is the administrative office of HCS Head Start, the nonprofit that provides Head Start services to 650 children and employs about 230 staff across 10 centers, including the Janis Santos Center. It receives about $16 million a year from the federal government and is one of organizations providing Head Start to about 10,000 children across the state.

Its offices are a repurposed mansion once owned by one of Springfield’s mayors. The butler’s pantry now holds a copier. The elevator shaft that once ferried guests to a third-floor ballroom is now a closet.

Sitting at a conference table in her office that was once a bedroom, Blais said she does not see regulations affected by the rollback as a burden on the program.
“We see [them] as essential methods that are needed to provide a well-rounded, comprehensive program,” Blais said.

Blais sits on the board of the New England Head Start Association. She was recently appointed to the National Head Start Association board.

Head Start: ‘Not for everybody’

Started as an eight-week demonstration project as part of President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty, Head Start has grown into a program that serves about 700,000 children across the U.S. a year.

The program was designed to disrupt a cycle of poverty, helping students enter kindergarten on the same footing as children from more affluent families.

“Head Start was designed not for everybody,” Blais said. “It was designed for children who were coming from low-income families or vulnerable communities and making sure that they had a head start — pun intended — to make sure that they could keep pace with their peers who might have had different opportunities,” Blais said.

Last month, the Department of Health and Human Services announced it was cutting what it viewed as unnecessary bureaucracy in the program.

Saying it was his uncle who originally created Head Start, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Health and Human Services secretary, said the program was based on the idea that the trifecta of childhood development, nutrition and strong families could “change the course of a child’s life.”

“Today, we are returning Head Start to those roots,” Kennedy said in announcing changes.

The changes are aimed at placing more responsibility in the program on parents and local communities, a government statement said.

Last year, a draft budget of the Department of Health and Human Services proposed cutting funding for Head Start, the Associated Press reported at the time.

But a few weeks later, Kennedy told Congress in written testimony that Head Start would continue to be funded at the same level it was the year before. “In exchange, Head Start needs to be consistent with administration priorities,” Kennedy wrote.

Kennedy’s uncle, Sargent Shriver, said when he learned half the people living in poverty in the U.S. were under 15, he used $18 million appropriated for Johnson’s War Against Poverty to mobilize volunteers to help 580,000 students in the summer of 1965 prepare for first grade, according to a speech he gave in 2000. Shriver, who served as Johnson’s director of the Office of Economic Opportunity, died in 2011.

Announcing plans to extend the experiment, Johnson said Head Start emerged at the end of the summer of 1965 “battle tested and it has been proven worthy.”

Spanish-speaking students in New York City learned enough English to participate in school, Johnson said. Parents who were suspicious of school administrators started volunteering their time. Health screenings in Jacksonville, Florida, found that more than half the children tested were anemic and a quarter had eye trouble.

For some children, the Head Start experiment was the first time they tried a banana or held a pencil, Johnson said.

“We have reached a landmark — not just in education, but in the maturity of our own democracy,” Johnson said. “The success of this year’s program … are symbols of this nation’s commitment to the goal that no American child shall be condemned to failure by the accident of his birth.”

The performance standards

Blais said she is waiting a couple days for the school year to get fully underway before holding a staff meeting to discuss in depth the federal government’s proposed changes to Head Start.

“Everyone’s trying to read the tea leaves in terms of kind of what does this really mean to the future of the program,” Blais said.

The proposed changes means replacing the current standards with a shorter list, according to an overview of the changes by the Massachusetts Head Start Association.

No longer can families simply say they are homeless, according to the association. Under the changes, they would have to provide documentation of some kind.

About 17% of the families that HCS Head Start assisted last year said they were experiencing homelessness, according to an opinion article written by Blais.

Gone, too, are program requirements when it comes to health and dental care, including rules saying all children need to receive developmental screenings, the association said.

The proposed rules also require Head Start instruction be given only in English. More than 60% of children that go to HCS Head Start speak English and another language at home, according Blais.

Few options in Western Mass.

The proposed changes to Head Start add up to an attempt by President Donald Trump to “dismantle it from the inside out,” Gov. Maura Healey said in a statement Aug. 26.

She, along with several state officials, urged residents and teachers to speak out in opposition to the changes, as the Department of Health and Human Services is holding a public comment period on the proposal until Oct. 6.

State Sen. Jake Oliveira, D-Ludlow, said in a statement that the proposed federal changes would fundamentally alter what Head Start provides families.

“We should be expanding Head Start by investing in the educators, providers, and services that make it work, not asking children and families to accept less,” Oliveira said.

The program is especially needed in Western Massachusetts, the senator added, because residents already have few choices when it comes to child care and early education.

Students becoming the teachers

The impact of Head Start in Western Massachusetts can be felt across the generations.

Blais’ first memories of Head Start were of the naptime cots, the teacher who played a guitar while leading the children in song, the lunches.

Blais’ mom, then recently single, turned to Head Start for child care as she went to Springfield Technical Community College to study to become a court stenographer.

“I know that if she didn’t have that care for us, myself and my sister, at that time, she would not have finished her degree,” Blais said.

It allowed her mother to get a good-paying job at the courthouse, and then another job at the post office.

Eventually, the family moved out of Springfield housing into a home in the Sixteen Acres neighborhood, according to Blais.

Myrna Nuñez sent her son, now 35, to Head Start. Years later, her grandson went through the program, too.

“They’re doing really good right now,” Nuñez said as she sat at a table while 2-year-old boys in her toddler class used glue sticks to attach pieces of colored paper to pages containing letters of the alphabet.

She has worked as a teacher at the Head Start center for 25 years, a job she said is not for everyone. “You gotta have lots of patience,” she said, “lots of love for the job, for the kids, the families.”

It includes encouraging parents to get engaged with their children’s education and pursue their own goals, like returning to school, she said. At the same time, parents can come into the classroom and give them ideas for activities.

After a child begins to attend Head Start, the current standards require them to undergo health screenings within 45 days.

Those are performed by Yamaya Perez, health administrator. For instance, she may perform vision assessments on infants 7 or 8 months old.

She’s a former Head Start kid herself, attending a center in Holyoke. Teachers there helped her mom, in her early 20s at the time, not feel as overwhelmed, Perez said.

Now, she’s seven months into her job at Head Start. “I literally feel like I’m an auntie to all the babies here.”