NHSA: President's Budget Does Not Fix Head Start's 'Billion Broken Promises' Funding Crisis

Token adjustment falls short of $1 billion effective cut in program since FY 2002; Making matters worse: additional funding gap remains in wake of hundreds of unfunded new regulations imposed in December.

Salem-News.com file photo

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) - The President's proposed budget for Head Start to be made public today comes in $923 million short of covering the effective cut in the program since Fiscal Year (FY) 2002, according to a statement issued today by the National Head Start Association.

The organization represents children, family, educators and others involved in America's first and most successful comprehensive early-childhood education program.

To make matters worse, the new White House budget plan would do nothing to close the additional and substantial gap created in December 2007 when Head Start was reauthorized with hundreds of new costly regulations and then suffered a cut of more than $10 million during the Fiscal Year 2008 appropriations process.

The NHSA statement issued today by Board Chairman Ron Herndon, who is also director of the Albina Head Start program (Portland, OR), reads as follows:

"The $148.6 million increase proposed in the President's budget will not even begin to resolve the dangerous funding crisis that exists today for Head Start. If Head Start is going to be saved, the program needs a 'catch up' appropriation of at least an extra $472 million now in the FY 2008 supplemental appropriations bill and then an additional $360 million above the prior fiscal year's funding level for each fiscal year from 2009 to 2013.

The 'billion broken promises' in Head Start funding is a problem that the White House and Congress created and it is now up to them to fix it. Most recently, President Bush and Congress put Head Start on a path to crisis in December 2007 after first reauthorizing the program with hundreds of costly new requirements and then failing to appropriate the funds needed to pay for current program operations, much less the expensive new rules. In fact, funding for Head Start was cut by more than $10 million, despite the new regulatory requirements that will cost hundreds of millions of additional dollars to implement.

You can't load up Head Start programs with hundreds of new regulations and then pull the rug out from under the program by hitting it with a cut. Everyone in the Head Start community wants to see the best possible Head Start program. In fact, many of the new Head Start requirements in the reauthorization process -- including easing the eligibility guidelines for Head Start children from 100 to 130 percent of the federal poverty line, increased credentials for teachers and other staff, and priority enrollment for homeless children -- were supported by NHSA and Head Start parents, directors, teachers, and staff on the assumption that the hundreds of millions of dollars needed to pay for them would be appropriated. Other costly new requirements were included in the reauthorization bill as well, including mandatory enrollment of special needs children, extensive new training and related procedures, and a huge jump in new recordkeeping and reporting requirements (including HIPAA-like privacy rules).

Unfortunately, Head Start was in a financial crisis even before the unfortunate developments of December 2007.

Hundreds of Head Start programs across the United States had no choice in 2006 and 2007 but to scale back days and hours of operations, bus service, support staff, and other critical services and manpower. Many Head Start programs have even had to eliminate health insurance coverage for their teachers and staff. With cash-strapped Head Start programs already having slashed operations to the bone (and beyond in some cases), the FY 2008 funding cut means that Head Start programs will have experienced a real decline in federal support of 11 percent since FY 2002 (inflation-adjusted). If federal support for Head Start had kept pace with inflation over this period, it would have risen from $6.54 billion in FY 2002 to $7.77 billion in FY 2008.

Even if Head Start received every penny of the White House's proposed FY 2009 budget increase, the program would still be 'in the hole' by some $923 million, suffering from an effective funding cut of 12 percent by the end of that budget period. And keep in mind that considerable figure does not take into account the additional hundreds of millions of dollars needed to pay for the new Head Start reauthorization requirements approved in December 2007.

For all of these reasons, it must be concluded that the President's budget is not a serious step in the direction of reversing the 'billion broken promises' in Head Start funding. It is now time for Congress to put Head Start on a sure path to closing the FY 2002-FY 2007 funding gap and also paying for the hundreds of new requirements imposed under the 2007 reauthorization measure."