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The early education program, Head Start, serves roughly 12,000 children in Wisconsin and about 800 in Dane County. On today’s show, host Douglas Haynes speaks with Jennifer Bailey, executive director of Reach Dane and president of the Wisconsin Head Start Association, about proposed federal cuts to and looming deregulation of this program.
Head Start is a comprehensive early childhood program that serves pregnant people and kids ages 0-5 years. It’s unique because of its wraparound services, from mental and physical health to family services. Bailey says that when parents are doing well, kids will do well. So they support parents to reach their goals, like getting a GED, finding stable housing, or going back to school.
Head Start is a federal-to-local program that also serves the most vulnerable families, those at 100% of the poverty level. Bailey says that she’s seen a rise of unhoused families in Madison and the kids who make it into Head Start “are living in trauma.” Reach Dane serves more unhoused children than any program in Wisconsin.
The Head Start program has faced other proposed cuts and challenges during the second Trump administration. About half of the regional offices have been closed, including one that served Wisconsin. And the recent proposed changes to the program would compromise the standards that have been put in place by many providers. New provisions would raise child-staff ratios and mandate English-only instruction, even though low child-staff ratios and multilingual education are supported by decades of research. They also discuss the broad-scale childcare crisis especially in rural areas, what Bailey envisions for a brighter future, and how people can leave comment on the proposed federal changes.
Jennifer Bailey is the executive director of Reach Dane in Madison which provides early childhood services to over 800 underserved children in Dane and Green Counties.
Featured image of children in a Head Start program via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).
The post Deregulating Head Start Will Harm Wisconsin Families appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.
