Low-Income Kids Are Being Kicked Out Of Their Preschool Programs Thanks To Sequestration

By Annie-Rose Strasser/Think Progress

The early childhood education program Head Start provides educational opportunities specifically to low-income kids. But 70,000 of those students will lose the opportunity to be in the program as a result of the drastic reductions in funding triggered by sequestration.

Reports are beginning to roll in about how children will bear the brunt of Congressional inaction. In several states, programs have to decide where they will make the cuts. In some cases, that means picking which students will be kept in the program, and which will be forced to leave:

INDIANA: “At least two Indiana Head Start programs have resorted to a random drawing to determine which three-dozen preschool students will be removed from the education program for low-income families, a move officials said was necessary to limit the impact of mandatory across-the-board federal spending cuts. [Programs] in Columbus and Franklin are losing two classrooms, meaning 36 children won’t be able to return after Friday. Last week, a lottery drawing determined which children would remain in the Columbus program, and Franklin had scheduled its lottery for Tuesday night.” [Indiana Journal Gazette, March 13, 2013.]

TENNESSEE: “A letter went out recently to parents and guardians with children in the program stating that the cuts have affected the Head Start program in several ways. One, and perhaps the move that hurts more families than any, is that all bus transportation will discontinue on March 18. The letter was sent out shortly after the sequestration took place on March 1 to give the parents a couple of weeks to try to find alternate means of transportation. According to the letter, ‘Every effort will be made to reinstate transportation services starting in August.’” [Clairebornprogress.net, March 13,2012]

WASHINGTON: ‘We’ll [lose] money for the child care food program. And there may be dollars lost from our partnership with the Spokane School District for serving kids with disabilities,’ said [The Director of Program Services, David Colburn] Colburn.[...] Spokane Head Start currently serves 900 families and there are a thousand more on the waiting list. Cutting kids already in the program is considered a last resort but leaders say it’s simply unavoidable.” [KREM.com, March 1, 2013.]

PENNSYLVANIA: Jody Thomas, a local Pennsylvania Head Start Director, “said, the centers provide lunch and snacks to the children, and with a funding cut,Head Start would not be buying as much food from grocery stores in the area, or as much cleaning or other supplies. Less fuel also could be purchased for Headstart’s buses, with the cuts, she noted.[...] At the Troy Head Start, Laura Steele, a teacher for the Troy 1 Head Start, said that she was concerned about the cuts.[...] ‘I am afraid we won’t be able to service as many children as we do now,’ she said. ‘We are going to try our best to keep the high-quality programs we have.’” [Pennsylvania Daily Review, March 14, 2013.]

FLORIDA: “Commissioners are expected to discuss the shortfall at a meeting April 2, but administrators have tentatively proposed a series of services that could be eliminated to help bridge the financial gap.[..,] Under the proposal,buses that take children to and from the county’s Head Start centers would be eliminated. Roughly 400 of the 2,296 children enrolled in the county’s Head Start program rely on the buses to get to the centers, Van Arnam said. The cut would result in the elimination of 14 jobs.” [Palm Beach Post, March 13, 2013.]

Preschool is not an extracurricular activity for kids. It’s been proven to help kids learn to socialize and become well-adjusted citizens. A study in California found that “our society receives $9 in benefits for every $1 invested in Head Start children.” A Center for American Progress report found that children who don’t receive early childhood education are 40 percent more likely to become a parent as a teenager, 25 percent more likely to drop out of school, and 70 percent more likely to be arrested for a violent crime.

Santorum Opposes Early Childhood Education: Government Wants To ‘Indoctrinate’ Children ‘From The Womb’

By Pat Garofalo/Think Progress

Last month, former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) — a long-shot contender for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination — said American students scoring low on history tests is proof of “a conscious effort on the part of the left, who has a huge influence on our curriculum, to desensitize America to what American values are so they are more pliable to the new values that they would like to impose on America.” During a campaign appearance at the Perry Public Library in Perry, Iowa this week, Santorum took this line of thinking a step further, explaining that he is opposed to early childhood education programs because he feels they are a government attempt to “indoctrinate your children“:

It is a parent’s responsibility to educate their children. It is not the government’s job. We have sort of lost focus here a little bit. Of course, the government wants their hands on your children as fast as they can. That is why I opposed all these early starts and pre-early starts, and early-early starts. They want your children from the womb so they can indoctrinate your children as to what they want them to be. I am against that.

“Obviously, socialists love children, just like they love people in groups of one million or more,” Santorum added.

Santorum’s bizarre conspiracy-theorizing aside, study after study has shown that federal early childhood education programs have substantial benefits. For instance, students enrolled in Head Start are more likely to be reading and writing at the appropriate level in their early school years, have better health outcomes, earn more money, and commit fewer crimes. Parents with students in Head Start and Early Head Start are also more likely to be involved in their child’s education and cost states less in Medicaid outlays.

One long-term study in California found that “our society receives nearly $9 in benefits for every $1 invested in Head Start children.” Meanwhile, conservative projections show that the real fiscal rate of return overall on public early education investments is about 10 percent. The Center on Children and Families has found that investments in pre-school not only boost GDP, but pay for themselves in the long-term.

As Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said when discussing the value of investments in education, “the payoffs of early childhood programs can be especially high.” But Santorum would rather play the socialist card than ensure that the richest nation on Earth do all it can for its youth.