Posted on: Wednesday, April 16, 2003

Bush's plan for Head Start blasted

By Beverly Creamer
Advertiser Education Writer

U.S. Rep. Neil Abercrombie yesterday accused President Bush of playing politics with the country's poorest children because of the administration's efforts to change federal financing for Head Start, a move which he said would erode money from the program.

"If (Head Start financing) is just a block grant to states, the state can put the money anywhere it wants," Abercrombie, D-Hawai'i, told a gathering of Head Start teachers and administrators at the Disabled American Veterans Hall at Ke'ehi Lagoon.

"You become just one more part of the competition, and you're competing against 140 other programs."

He called on Head Start teachers and parents in Hawai'i and across the country to organize a national campaign to make Head Start's future one of the major issues of the 2004 presidential campaign.

"A well-organized group in each state could make a difference," Abercrombie said. "Every e-mail, fax and letter gets read and added up. What's necessary is for tens of thousands of parents and supporters of Head Start to let their representatives and the president know that, absent their support, they're going to pay for it at the polls."

Under the Bush proposal, Head Start would be made a block grant program and shifted from the jurisdiction of the Department of Health and Human Services to the U.S. Department of Education.

Roland Gella, director of Head Start programs on O'ahu, called that "the beginning of the end" for the 38-year-old program, which serves 2,400 children in Hawai'i and 900,000 nationwide.

"The history of block grants shows that unless you earmark the money, it's gone," Gella said. Hawai'i now gets about $20 million annually in federal money for the program, he said.

The Bush administration is proposing to make a similar switch with other federal grants. Abercrombie and congressional colleagues who have written in opposition to both the president and the House Appropriations Committee, note that DHHS has the organizational infrastructure to both support and monitor Head Start programs.

Head Start provides preschool education to children of low-income families and is a source of a wide range of guidance for parents.

"Head Start is not just about literacy," Abercrombie said. "It's a broad health, nutrition, family-based organization that's as much about the family and the parents as the child. No way is there a more important political issue in this country than what happens to Head Start."