Mary Capello is President and CEO of the Texas Migrant Council, an organization under the Migrant Head Start Association umbrella. Their program is one of the top ten largest in the nation but couldn’t escape the hardships striking Head Starts everywhere. They had to get rid of 338 slots and cut spending by $4 million. But that’s not all, Capello says. The school day will now end two hours earlier and the summer term will end two weeks early.
“Now parents are having to sit down and make hard decisions about what they are going to do, when they are going to work, how they are going to take care of their kids. They have to find an alternative,” she says.
But the biggest example of cuts to the Head Start program came in the latest numbers released today by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) More than 57,000 children will be cut from Head Start because of the ongoing federal budget cuts known as sequestration. The federal pre-kindergarten education program helps tens of thousands of low income families across the nation get access to early learning programs, day care, and medical care among other services. The cuts have slashed over $400 million from the programs $8 billion budget.
For more go to:
http://nbclatino.com/2013/08/19/latinos-among-those-hit-the-hardest-by-head-start-cuts/
