How sequestration Head Start cuts ripple through a community
Grant Slater/KPCC
Maggie Simpson sings a song about animals with her three young daughters. Her two daughters that are old enough have gone to Head Start programs that are being threatened by sequestration cuts.
It’s day three of Jenaveve Cardenas’ educational career and the four-year-old clings to her mother’s leg, sobbing.
Cardenas attends the Head Start program at Washington Elementary in Pomona. Her mother, Magdalena Simpson, wiped her daughter’s tears and promised she’d be back soon.
Outside the classroom, Simpson laughs: “She’s crying, but I’m just glad she got a place in the class!”
Like most Head Start providers, Pomona Unified has had to make tough choices to deal with the 5.27 percent across-the-board sequester cuts handed down by the federal government.
Across California, more than 5,000 three- and four-year-olds don’t have a seat in a Head Start preschool this year. Nationwide, according to the Obama Administration, 57,200 children will miss out.
Keesha Woods, who runs Head Start programming for the Los Angeles County Office of Education, said parents are panicked.
One mother called her office and said: “I was depending on my three year old getting in, so now I’m going to have to quit my job,” Woods recalls.
Even after losing 900 slots, almost 21,000 children receive will receive free Head Start programs through the county office.
She said many providers have trimmed administrative staff to preserve as many seats