Head Start preschools aim to fight poverty, but their teachers struggle to make ends meet

WASHINGTON (AP) – In some ways, Doris Milton is a startup success story. She was a student in one in all Chicago’s inaugural Head Start classes when the anti-poverty program, which aimed to help children succeed by providing them with a first-class preschool education, was in its infancy.

Milton loved her teacher a lot that she decided to follow in her footsteps. She currently works as a Head Start teacher in Chicago.

After 4 a long time on the job, Milton, 63, earns $22.18 an hour. Her salary puts her above the poverty line, but she is just not financially secure. She needs dental work she will’t afford and is paying off $65,000 in student loan debt from National Louis University, where she was two classes shy of earning her bachelor’s degree. In 2019, she resigned due to illness.

“I’m trying to meet their needs when no one is meeting mine,” Milton said of teaching preschoolers.

Head Start Teachers – 70% of them have a bachelor’s degree — earn a mean of $39,000 a 12 months, significantly lower than public school teachers with similar qualifications. President Joe Biden wants to raise their salaries, but Congress has no plans to increase the Head Start budget.

Many have left their jobs – about one in five teachers will retire in 2022 – and brought higher-paying jobs in restaurants or retail stores. But if Head Start centers have to raise teacher pay without additional money, operators say they might have to reduce the number of youngsters they serve.

The Biden administration says this system is already discouraging children because so many teachers have left and never enough staff are lining up to take their places. Officials say it is not sensible for an anti-poverty program during which people of color make up 60% of the workforce to underpay its staff.

“Some teachers earn poverty wages themselves, which undermines the original intent of the program,” said Katie Hamm, deputy assistant secretary for the Office of Early Childhood Development.

Head Start, created as a part of President Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty,” serves a number of the most vulnerable children, including those that are homeless, in foster care or from households below the federal poverty line. With child care prices exceeding college tuition in lots of states, Head Start is the one option inside financial reach for a lot of families.

The Department of Health and Human Services, which administers this system, estimates that the wage increase wouldn’t have a big impact on the number of youngsters served because many programs are already understaffed in all grades. In total, Head Start programs receive enough funding to cover the associated fee of 755,000 seats. However, many programs can’t be fully enrolled because there usually are not enough teachers. Therefore, the department estimates that only about 650,000 of those seats are filled.

The proposed change would force Head Start programs to be permanently cut because they couldn’t afford to keep so many teachers.

That worries Head Start leaders, despite the fact that lots of them support raising pay for their staff, said Tommy Sheridan, deputy director of the National Head Start Association. Association the Biden administration asked to allow some programs to waive requirements.

“We like the idea, but it will be expensive,” Sheridan said. “And we do not see Congress appropriating this money overnight.

While a large money infusion doesn’t appear to be within the near future, other solutions have been proposed.

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The Biden administration on Monday published the letter calling on school districts to spend more of the federal money they receive on early childhood education, including Head Start.

On Thursday, U.S. Reps. Mikie Sherrill, D-N.J. and Juan Ciscomani, R-Ariz., introduced a bill that may make Head Start possible employ community college students who’re working toward degrees in child development.

The stakes are perhaps highest in rural launches. The program, positioned outside Anchorage, Alaska, is closing one in all its five facilities because it struggles with a employee shortage. Program director Mark Lackey said the heartbreaking decision allowed him to raise the wages of his remaining staff in hopes of reducing staff turnover.

“It hurts and we don’t want to do it,” Lackey said. “But at the same time, I think it’s kind of necessary.”

Overall, his program cut nearly 100 positions due to staffing shortages. And the population it serves is in dire need: About half of the youngsters are homeless or in foster care. Biden’s proposal may force this system to be further narrowed.

Amy Esser, executive director of Mercer County Head Start in rural western Ohio, said it’s difficult to attract candidates for open teaching positions due to low pay. Starting salaries at Celina City Schools are a minimum of $5,000 higher than at Head Start, and the positions require the identical qualifications.

But she warned that mountain climbing teacher pay could have disastrous consequences for her program and for the broader community, which has few options for child care in low-income households.

“We would be doomed to extinction,” Esser wrote in a letter to the Biden administration“leaving children and families with little or no opportunity for a safe, nurturing environment in which to achieve school readiness.”

Arlisa Gilmore, a longtime Head Start teacher in Tulsa, Oklahoma, said that if it were up to her, she would not sacrifice any job to raise teacher pay. She earns $25 an hour and admits she’s lucky: she collects income from renting her own residence and shares expenses together with her husband. The kids in her class aren’t so lucky.

“I don’t think they should reduce the number of classrooms,” Gilmore said. “At my facility, we have a huge community of children living in poverty.”

Milton, a teacher from Chicago, wonders why such a difficult compromise should be made in any respect.

“Why can’t it be, ‘Let’s help both’? Why do we have to choose?” Milton said. “Don’t we deserve this? Don’t children deserve this?”