Zed!

Morning. How’s tricks?

Thanks, Christy!

Great post, Christy!

Missing from your list of why this is a good thing, stimulus-wise, is that the entire structure for using this money is already in place and it can get into the economy FAST. Indeed, every Head Start operation that I am familiar with has a list of projects they’d like to start or enlarge, staff positions they’d like to add, physical upgrades to their facilities that they’d like to make, and similar improvements to their programs. The planning has been done, and everyone is on board with the projects. The only thing holding them back is money.

If you want to make a mark on children’s lives, and a mark on the communities in which they live — not to mention lay the foundation for stronger teens and communities down the road — it’s hard to come up with a better plan than this!

I was on a conference call about all of this yesterday. There are a lot of currents and counter-currents on early childhood education funding increases — and pushback from some folks who want a separate package rather than making it part of the stimulus, meaning they hope it will fall by the wayside instead of getting passed as part of the whole.

I don’t think we can wait. Demand is increasing tremendously across the country for this as parents get laid off or downsized out of jobs and enter job training programs. These kids cannot be allowed to fall through the cracks or we’ll simply end up with a huge problem on our hands in the next generation.

It would also be wonderful if the staff at these programs could be paid a living wage. What they can afford to pay now is pretty pitiful in almost every case I know…

thanks Christy – how much $$$ do you think Head Start could use? not a middle of the road number, the max they could take in and use effectively in a year if they had it right now?

Head Start says they could put a $4.3 billion increase to work within days of receiving it. Peterr’s right — they already have the infrastructure and planning in place in communities all across the country. What they desperately need are the funds to do the work.

Amen.

Christy,
Thanks for a great post! I share your fear that far to much of the focus is on very near term “fixes”. Without long term solutions, thoughtfully implemented and actively monitered, we don’t have much of a chance of survival in the now global rat race.

I had to get out of adult literacy education because of the pitiful funding. I realize it’s not the same as ECE but it certainly is important as well.

Christy! Thank you for your wisdom and vision.

There are many communities that need more in this area of education. Thanks Christy for posting on this topic.

great – i just want a figure to ask for. that seems to me to be more effective than asking for support but letting the PTB decide how much.

agreed. any thoughts on what kind of additional national funding you would like to see?

OT but the astroturf groups are gearing up against unions:
Bill Easing Unionizing Is Under Heavy Attack

No surprise since these folks hate the little people. Repubs are going to give Hilda Solis sh*t at her Senate hearings today.

When the military recognizes that we’re in big trouble in terms of early childhood ed, then you know the bells are ringing all over the place. This Op-Ed was written by the following: “Army Gen. Hugh Shelton served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1997 to 2001. John H. Dalton served as secretary of the Navy from 1993 to 1998.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/politi…..tico/17180

“While Americans have always been willing to serve, too many of the young people we need for military service today are inadequately prepared because they lack a high school diploma or because they are in poor physical shape or have a criminal record.

In fact, over 72 percent of 17- to 24-year-olds do not meet the basic educational, physical and moral standards required for service…The most important long-term investment we can make for a strong military is in the health and education of the American people. If we want to ensure that we have a strong, capable fighting force, we need to help America’s youth succeed academically, graduate from high school and obey the law.

The most reliable way to achieve these goals is by providing at-risk children with quality early childhood education. ”

Digg is open, folks – let’s get this topic some real attention!!

We used to say that if all the people that we could help showed up at the same time it would be a disaster. The funding of these programs is pitiful and then we have a situation like the one here where they moved the AL program from a location near downtown to the tech school out in the boonies. Like head start, the structure exists to expand programs but there is little desire. It’s all lip service about the “literacy crisis”, Here’s a link to the National Center for the Study of Adult Learning and Literacy but I don’t want to derail Christy’s important post.

The thing is, once you start looking at the costs for these early programs versus the long-term costs for juvenile and adult criminal programs, food stamps, welfare, and other dependency programs over a lifetime? It’s no comparison at all. A little investment up front pays huge dividends over a lifetime. But we aren’t smart enough to do that…usually.

It’s time we all wised up. It’s not just the morally right thing to do, it’s also fiscally smart — which ought to garner support from both sides of the aisle. “Ought to” being the sadly all-too-inoperative phrase in most cases.

It’s why we all have to start pushing on this now.

Really, peas in the same pod — nutritional support, early learning, educating parents…it all feeds into the same thing: teaching people how to lift themselves up and onto their own feet, and giving them a sense of respect that the earn for themselves. That can make ALL the difference.

Yep — I linked up a similar piece above in one of my links. The military is having a tough time recruiting soldiers it doesn’t have to teach rudimentary basics to once they are in uniform. That makes for a slow start for those kids, and puts them in danger if they don’t have rudimentary reading and math skills in the field and have been able to shield it…and they have to read a code manual on their own or any number of other things in a crisis.

The ripple out effect of NOT doing this stuff is enormous.

Thanks so much for the diggs, gang!

Thank-you Christy!

My grandniece, who I am raising, was just accepted to our local Head Start program. I am raising her in poverty, she is three and her parents are on the street. She was born a child of color, HIV and Hep C exposed, mother and father on drugs. Her “introduction” to this world was months of excruciating treatments and testing that often left me in tears as I watched her suffer through them. There is nothing like watching a 6 month old baby being held down on an examination table while they take 8 vials of blood and give treatments. Treatments that some doctors say could have killed her as they have with babies in South Africa. Missy is now considered HIV and Hep-C negative, and with a great deal of love and caring, my little “Missy” has grown into a funny, lively, smart little girl.

However, I am now living the nightmare of wondering if I should tell her school officials of her beginnings, because since we do not have a complete generation with these treatments, we do not know if these treatments “stick.” I would DIE if someone treating a scrape this little one got on the playground, was infected because I trusted that she was not considered HIV positive now. Still the child protective services, not wanting Missy to be “labeled,” told me not to say anything and I understand why …

But when I applied for Head Start for her, initially they had to turn Missy away because the district where we live had to give 4 year olds the spaces, for good reason. See, many of these 4 years olds had had *no* exposure to school and needed to get prepared for kindergarten, as most other upper income kids their age already have gotten. This would have put these lower income kids behind from the get-go.

I am adopting this little one but looming in the background is the disadvantage this little one has had from birth and while I know that love goes a long way, I also know that raising kids in poverty, no matter how hard you work, is also setting this child at a disadvantage. I am an older “mom” now and I will give her my all, which as a struggling single mom who worked at what I call “McJobs,” I could never give to my other kids.

I now know from experience that parenting is the most important job you can do. After all raising kids is about making a future for this country. It should be counted as “work” and “dependency on welfare” is an oxymoron when kids are growing up without any direction or parental influences because Mom (and Dad) are off trying to work to get enough to pay the rent and do not have the energy or the time to give to the ones languishing at home (if they can afford a home).

Right now parenting is treated as if it is a “recreation” not an important job. When anyone says, “Why should I support raising other people’s kids?” I tell them that with their thinking lets take this a little further. I ask them, “Then who do you think is going to pay your Social Security? Who is going to care for this country when your time is past? Who is going to fight in our wars? ‘Those people’s’ kids, that’s who!”

If we do not support these kids and their parents now, all you can ask for is a generation of kids who think they have no future and do not matter because, after all, they are treated as a burden, they are not considered important enough and worth our time and support.

How about seeing these kids as the future we want for our country instead? How about realizing that there are people out there who need support in order to raise their kids in a way that gives them and our country a future, not punish them for being born?

My 2 cents,

Cat in Seattle

Parenting IS “work” and furthermore, low income families are contributing to our society. Low income people pay more taxes than the rich or corporations, yet it is the corporations at this time that “merit” our tax support without so much as even having to tell us how they are spending our money. http://www.itepnet.org/ (see the pdf’s on the left side of this page which will show you who is paying taxes and who is not as well as who are paying less).

I am an activist trying to spread the truth about low income Americans. We do work hard and we do give back!

Cat In Seattle

It’s interesting that some great work in adult literacy came from the military. That’s because with project 100,000 during Vietnam the enlistment standards were lowered so much that a great number of troops couldn’t read worth a damn.

“All that is very well,” answered Candide, “but let us cultivate our garden.”–Voltaire, Candide

Investing in these programs is cultivating the garden of our future.

What a terrific post. And would that the PTB could hear and understand the wisdom of it.

(((((mntleo2)))))

Thank you for your hard work and caring. Missy is lucky to have you in her life.

Christy –

Nail on the head. One of the major benefits of these types of programs is the cost avoidance of the problems that they help prevent. For all of the warm, fuzzy benefits of Head Start, etc., they really do have a major impact on “bottom line” by lowering the cost of addressing later educational intervention, crime, health care, and other “externalities”.

What the social conservatives don’t like about Head Start and similar early intervention programs that it threatens their screed on “self-reliance” and “personal responsibility.”

California school districts throughout the state are facing HUGE BUDGET CUTS this year and next because of the “2/3 Rule” which requires a 2/3 vote for taxes, and allows 1-2 Republican nincompoops to hold up the entire budget process because they insist on ‘no new taxes.’

Hence, education in California has less support than 40 other states. Districts are being asked to make MID-YEAR CUTS: Who needs English teachers, huh? What about classes of 40 for English language learners? elimination of advanced Spanish and French?

thanks for the link. probably overly simplistic, but i think of these issues as all linked – some of the adults who could benefit from literacy programs are parents, and education for the adults means they have skills to teach their children.

I would also like to see free meals programs in all schools and preschool programs — free to everybody, no questions asked.

The benefits of decent nutrition for ALL our children go without saying.

But it would also be a direct and immediate economic stimulus in that it would free up money from the food budget — as well as saving a lot of time getting lunches ready every day!

Linda — I did an initial piece on childhood nutrition support here. And I’ll have more on that coming up as we move forward, too. Lots more we can do there as well.