Early Childhood Development
Aired October 14, 2004

You’ve probably heard of Head Start. It’s a program that’s been around for 30 years or so, and it’s designed to help low-income preschool children be “ready to learn” when they get to kindergarten. Like a lot of other social service programs in Ohio, Head Start is feeling the squeeze of a tight state budget. Funding cuts have led to new regulations that went into effect on July 1st. The new rules have increased co-payments for low-income working families, eliminated more than 7,600 Head Start slots, and made it more difficult for families to qualify for Head Start services. These new regulations have had a dramatic impact here in Cleveland where nearly half of the children live below the poverty line, and where 70% of families with kids are led by a single parent. ideastream’s Julie Henry reports.

Twenty-eight year old Cleveland resident Monica Rivera is a single mom with two children: a 12-year-old son named Alex and a daughter named Jayda, who will turn five in November.

For the past two years, Jayda has been enrolled in a program that combines a Head Start curriculum in the morning with high-quality daycare in the afternoon. The program is run by a Cleveland non-profit group called the West Side Ecumenical Ministry, or “WSEM” for short. The full-day program enables Monica Rivera to work full-time at a local bank.

Monica Rivera: She's here all day. I drop her off between 8:00 and 8:15 and I pick her up about 5:15 in the afternoon.

And how have you liked the program?

Monica Rivera: I've loved it. I've loved every moment of it. They work on a lot of things, whether it's just a basic color or shape. And she comes homes and shows me new things every day, she brings home her beautiful artwork on a daily basis so I get to see exactly what she's doing every day So whether it's she's working on a drawing or she's working on the letter "A," she definitely has gained a lot through this program.

Rivera has always worked to support her two children. She’s proud of the fact that she’s never been on welfare. But she has had some help. Until recently, she qualified for a Head Start subsidy. RIvera paid $82 a month for Jayda’s full-day program. And the state picked up the rest of the tab. That is until Ohio enacted new Head Start regulations on July 1.

Monica Rivera: They pretty much said, you are over the guidelines, you no longer qualify, due to all the changes. They lowered the guidelines and I was no longer eligible.

Rivera’s monthly payment jumped from $82 to $297.

Monica Rivera: That's a big difference. To me, I'm the average person paycheck-to-paycheck. So $200 more is a big difference. It takes away from other bills, groceries or just miscellaneous things that I'm able to do. You pretty much just try to slide, whether this month you'll pay a little bit more on this or you'll pay what you're supposed to pay on that. And then next month you'll try to catch up on that. But you really never catch up by doing that. So pretty much you have to try to not buy a pair of shoes as often as you would or reduce the amount that you would spend on that particular item. So you have to learn how to pretty much budget everything all over again.

Well, would you want to say to state policy makers as they're looking at funding for head start and early childhood education?

Monica Rivera: I think that they need to put themselves into other people's shoes. They need to reconsider everything and evaluate it a little bit better before they make that type of a crucial change. Because it does make a big impact.

And many other Cleveland families have felt that impact, as WSEM Chief Program Officer Peggy Corbin explains.

Peggy Corbin: We also have other moms that were paying a $4 co-pay and now it's gone up to $226 dollars. So the impact on that where the mom got a raise at work, and we want moms to get promotions and we want them to get raises and we want them to be able to take care of their families. But then we penalize them and say, okay you got a raise, so instead of paying four dollars for your child care, you're going to be paying $226. And I would bet that that raise didn't take care of that $226. And I wish I could tell you that was an isolated experience, but it's not. We've had over 50 families that have jumps in voucher co-pays like that.

Families aren’t just paying more for Head Start services. Many don’t even qualify anymore under the new state guidelines. For instance last year, WSEM served 350 preschool children at 11 Head Start centers throughout Greater Cleveland. This year, only 144 preschool children have met the new state eligibility requirements. That’s forced WSEM to close six of its Head Start centers, and eliminate 18 jobs.

Peggy Corbin: I have a grandmother who adopted a child who is four years old because of the trauma and abuse that was going on in the child's life. The grandmother was working 35 hours, so she was qualified for our Head Start program. Her work, the business that she works for, downsized and now she's only working 30 hours. She doesn't qualify for head start anymore. so for the last month, that child, services have not been available to that child.

As WSEM Education Coordinator Kathy Krosky sees it, when a child loses Head Start services, the whole family loses.

Kathy Krosky: Head Start is totally based on the fact that we work with the entire family. So if mom went and got her GED, we can help her get skills to interview and get better jobs, we help them with, a lot of people want to move into a home, so we let them learn how to manage time and money so that they can become a home owner. We help end that cycle of poverty for a lot of our families.

Now recently, Governor Taft signed an Emergency Rule to make Head Start services available to more working families. It’s a temporary fix. But Kathy Krosky hopes that state lawmakers come up with permanent solutions to the problems faced by Ohio’s youngest and most vulnerable citizens.

Kathy Krosky: I think that we do need more classrooms. With the cuts that we've experienced, we've had to downsize as far as how many classrooms and centers that we do used to have and what we have today. And I think that a lot of families are left out there who are not eligible for the program and that's sad, seeing how as we were voted as the most poverty stricken area, and yet our children's families are not being eligible for Head Start, when we work with poverty families. And I don't see how that can be.

In Cleveland, I’m Julie Henry.