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Subject: Wexler Blasts Republicans for Poisoning Head Start Program with Discrimination FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE September 24, 2005 Contact: Lale Mamaux Phone: (202)225-3001 Cell: (202)225-1913 Wexler Blasts Republicans for Poisoning Head Start Program with Discrimination Amendment Would Allow Head Start Providers to Discriminate Based on Religious Beliefs (Washington, D.C.) - Congressman Robert Wexler (D-FL vehemently opposed an amendment to the School Readiness Act of 2005 (H.R. 2123) sponsored by Congressman Charles Boustany (R-LA) and supported by the Republican leadership, which would allow a faith-based sponsored Head Start Program to use federal taxpayer monies to discriminate against highly qualified teachers, volunteers and...

WASHINGTON - The House voted Thursday to let Head Start centers consider religion when hiring workers, overshadowing its moves to strengthen the preschool program's academics and finances. The Republican-led House approved a bill that lets churches and other faith-based preschool centers hire only people who share their religion, yet still receive federal tax dollars. Democrats blasted that idea as discriminatory. Launched in the 1960s, the nearly $7 billion Head Start program provides comprehensive education to more than 900,000 poor children. Though credited for getting kids ready for school, Head Start has drawn scrutiny as cases of financial waste and questions...

The House moved Thursday to shore up Head Start's academics and finances, but debate about updating the preschool program turned heated over the role religion can play in hiring. Republicans were ready to amend the Head Start bill so churches and other faith-based Head Start centers could factor religion into their hiring. Democrats called that idea discriminatory. Launched in the 1960s, the nearly $7 billion Head Start program provides comprehensive early education to more than 900,000 poor children. Though credited for getting kids ready for school, Head Start has drawn scrutiny as cases of financial waste and questions about academic...

WASHINGTON - Head Start helps poor, disadvantaged children narrow a gap in reading skills compared with other preschoolers, but the program doesn't help them catch up in math or their ability to comprehend what people say to them. The findings, according to a government report released Thursday, were based on research in which the skills of 3- and 4-year-olds who had been in Head Start for a year were compared with those of children the same age outside the program. "What these results suggest is that while this program has some benefits for kids, it can still be improved," said...

Former Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, who lost this crucial swing state in November, sounded Friday as if he were still stumping for Florida's votes. The Massachusetts senator, at a National Head Start Association conference to tout his plan to provide health care for uninsured children, hammered on familiar themes of values and unity while repeatedly criticizing the Bush administration and Republican leaders in Congress. "I went back and reread the whole New Testament the other day. Nowhere in the three-year ministry of Jesus Christ did I find a suggestion at all, ever, anywhere, in any way whatsover, that you...

WASHINGTON -- Windy Hill, the leader of the Head Start preschool program, resigned abruptly Friday. Hill has been under review by the Health and Human Services Department's inspector general over accusations of financial abuses at the Head Start center she ran in Bastrop, Texas, before becoming associate commissioner of the federal program in 2002. Hill has said she asked for the review to clear her name of the charges, which were raised by the National Head Start Association, a lobbying group that has clashed with the Bush administration. Head Start, the nation's signature early education program for the poor, provides...

The national defense budget could be cut by nearly a quarter and still leave the United States military in shape to take on all likely threats and fulfill its role in the war on terrorism, says Charles Pena, director of defense policy studies at the Cato Institute. Furthermore, the United States is outspending the rest of the world at an astounding rate. According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), in 2003: Total U.S. defense expenditures were $404.9 billion, an amount exceeding the combined defense expenditures of the next 13 countries and more than double the combined defense spending...

WASHINGTON - The nation's preschool program is susceptible to waste and poor service by local centers because of weak federal oversight, a congressional audit says. The review by the Government Accountability Office depicts federal management of Head Start as disjointed and inconsistent, allowing financial problems to go unchecked or unfixed. The audit -- which is to be released today but was obtained in advance by The Associated Press -- focuses on the Administration for Children and Families, a division of the Health and Human Services Department that oversees Head Start. The program, begun during President Johnson's War on Poverty in...

Goldwater Report Raises Questions about Government Plans for Preschool PHOENIX—In a report released this week on early education programs, Goldwater Institute president Darcy Olsen shows that U.S. elementary students outperform their international peers in reading, math, and science. The findings call into question the advisability of Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano’s plans to increase government involvement in early education, including kindergarten. The report, “Assessing Proposals for Preschool and Kindergarten: Essential Information for Parents, Taxpayers and Policymakers,” examines the results of model early education programs -- including Perry Preschool, Abecedarian, and Head Start and Arizona programs such as Reading First and kindergarten...

The hits just keep on coming for the county's much-maligned Head Start program, and this time they're coming from the federal government. A recent report from the Administration for Children & Families, a branch of the Department of Health & Human Services, has added its letterhead to the ever-growing list of agencies to have found serious deficiencies with two Head Start facilities in Contra Costa, Fairgrounds in Antioch and Brookside in Richmond. The review was prompted after the California Community Care Licensing Office issued an order to revoke the operating licenses of these facilities, due to systemic problems related to...

Republicans voiced outrage Thursday at the findings of a federal audit that exposed wide salary gaps between teachers and executives at Parent/Child Inc., the largest Head Start provider in San Antonio. "These abuses are nothing short of appalling, and they should be publicly condemned by anyone who cares about the future of Head Start," U.S. Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, said in a statement released Thursday. "The exaggerated executive salaries and expenses documented here are totally unacceptable," said U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas. "I am very concerned that a Head Start program would pay one official more than $200,000 while...

Universal, free preschool for all 4-year-olds in California: Sounds great, especially if you're a working parent shelling out thousands of dollars a year for preschool and child care. Let the state pay for it. But most middle-class children don't need preschool to reach their full potential. Poor children need a lot more -- high-quality, high-cost, full- day child care starting well before the age of 4. Californians want state-funded preschool, concluded a survey by First 5 California, the state commission created in 1998 by Proposition 10 (the cigarette tax surcharge) to fund programs for young children. Sixty percent of those...

Cocaine Found At Head Start Center Employees Get Drug Tested POSTED: 9:33 am CST March 9, 2004 SAN ANTONIO -- More than 12 employees at a near North Side child-learning center are waiting for results of a mandatory drug test after four small bags with cocaine residue were found Friday. A teacher's aide made the discovery inside a classroom at the Parent/Child Inc. Head Start at 3510 N. Main Ave. "She found four small closed sacks that had something white-looking in it that looked like powder," said Blanche Russ-Glover, chief executive officer of PCI. Police confirmed the residue was...

<p>A womens group fired the first legal salvo against the Bush administration's marriage-promotion agenda yesterday, filing a civil rights complaint that a government-funded program discriminates against women.</p> <p>The NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund charged that a pro-marriage program, the Family Formation and Development Project in Allentown, Pa., provides employment services to males only. That constitutes a violation of Title IX, the group claims, because the law prohibits discrimination based on gender in any government-funded program.</p>

Parents and taxpayers have good cause to look warily upon the state Department of Education's campaign to establish a universal preschool program in Connecticut. As explained in the state Board of Education's recent report, "Closing the Achievement Gap," by 2010 the plan would expand the government-run public schools to include preschool for 3- and 4-year-olds for at least 2½ hours a day and 180 days a year. "These services will promote the educational, social, emotional, artistic/aesthetic and physical health needs of every child, with the goal that all children in Connecticut will enter school succeeding and eager to build on...

Voinovich criticizes state GOP for cutting Head Start Saturday, December 06, 2003 Jeffrey Sheban THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH U.S. Sen. George V. Voinovich, who as governor championed children’s issues, said Ohio officials should be doing more to fund Head Start, the preschool program for children from low-income families. Speaking to Head Start professionals and parents in Columbus yesterday, Voinovich also shared the details of a bill he’s crafting to bolster the program, which has helped more than 21 million poor preschoolers since its inception in 1965. "As governor, we tried to make Ohio a state where children and families could live,...

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) - Democratic front-runner Howard Dean says he would double the nation's investment in early childhood education by spending $110 billion over 10 years. His "Invest for Success" plan would fully fund and double the enrollment in Head Start, offer preschool to every four-year-old and provide child care for another 1.4 million children, according to an outline of the plan obtained by The Associated Press. Dean staffers said repealing President Bush's tax cuts and ending billions of dollars in "corporate welfare" would finance the plan. "Our youngest children are being hurt. The president is underfunding programs like Head...

'Slow Start' to Level Pre-School Playing Field(2003-10-30) -- The Senate version of the Head Start reform bill would rename and 're-mission' the Great Society program. Instead of trying to prepare poor children for school in hopes of enhancing achievement, 'Slow Start' will enroll children from middle-class and wealthy families and attempt to "confuse and de-motivate them" so that they won't excel their peers from low-income families. 'Slow Start' is part of the Democrat party's new 'No Child Leaved Ahead' program, designed to prevent underachievers from suffering self-esteem drainage when they note the superior performance of their classmates. "Our nation was...

<p>A Senate Republican proposal for Head Start tightens oversight of the federal preschool program but doesn't allow any states full control over it, according to an outline of the plan circulated late last week.</p> <p>The plan, which is expected to be considered tomorrow by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, differs significantly from a House bill that was approved this summer with only Republican votes.</p>

Congress Returns To Church-State Issues On Agenda ( ABP) -- When Congress returns to session next week from its month-long summer recess, a host of church-state issues will be on the agenda – from gay marriage to school vouchers. The most visible debate may be over gay marriage. A proposed constitutional amendment that would limit marriage and marriage-like benefits to opposite-sex couples -- in some cases overturning state and local laws -- appears to be picking up momentum in Congress. The Federal Marriage Amendment, sponsored by Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-Colo.), will likely receive committee hearings in the early fall....