Head Start Reauthorized in House
WASHINGTON, Sept. 22 – The U.S. House of Representatives Thursday passed legislation that would allow faith-based program providers receiving federal funds for low income preschoolers to discriminate on the basis of religion in hiring.
The move came as the House reapproved the Head Start program for another five years. While the bill was expected to pass easily, the amendment, passed on a predominately party-line vote, drew opposition to the bill.
Nancy Topping-Tailby, executive director of the Massachusetts Head Start Association called the amendment “troubling.”
“It’s just not consistent with the Head Start philosophy,” she said.
The Senate approved its version of the Head Start reauthorization bill on May 25. It has similar provisions to the House version but has no provision for religious discriminatory hiring.
If the religious amendment is in the final reconciled version of the bill it would not have a great effect on the commonwealth as there is only one center run by a faith-based organization, according to Topping-Tailby.
The Head Start program provides a number of services for children from low income families up to age five, including programs for their education, health, and nutrition.
The House-passed version of the legislation includes provisions designed to increase transparency in accounting practices and new criteria by which Head Start centers will be judged. If a center falls short in any one of several fields – including education level of teachers, compliance with state standards, cooperation with state agencies and teaching performance – it will be open to competition from other providers when its grant comes up for renewal.
Officials at Gloucester’s local Head Start center expressed concern about the requirement that at least 50 percent of a center’s staff must have an associate’s degree, a two-year degree from a community college, or higher.
“Our salaries are so low, we have difficulty attracting and retaining people,” said Caroline Haines, chief operating officer at Pathways for Children, which operates Head Start centers in Gloucester, Rockport, Ipswich and Essex.
Out of nine lead teachers in their centers, she said, two have bachelor’s degrees and maybe two have associate’s degrees. Haines said her staff makes $10-$12 an hour.
“We’re having trouble finding any people to do this work,” Haines said. “We’re having trouble finding people who meet the minimum state qualifications. And our staff turnover is high.”
Haines also expressed concern about current testing measures, which she said have been classified as “invalid and unreliable” by the Government Accountability Office. There are provisions in the House bill that require the National Academy of Sciences to examine the current testing, but Haines believes the current test should be suspended while they’re developing a new standard.
Topping-Tailby said she isn’t concerned about most of the criteria for judging centers, because, “we’re a strong region.” However, she agreed that it’s difficult to find qualified people.
“It’s very hard to do with the current revenues we get, in terms of the salaries we can offer,” she said.
“Programs should be monitored, they should get their results,” she added, saying that programs that don’t measure up should be given a period of time to fix the areas where they fall short. “The House, unfortunately, is taking an approach where we feel that more programs will get pulled into recompetition than necessary,” she said.
Rep. John Tierney, D-Salem, who was on the committee that considered the bill, said that he shared concern over the ability to retain skilled teachers. “We’re not compensating people enough,” he said.
He worked to get education loan forgiveness for early childhood teachers built into the higher education reauthorization bill, and got $5,000 per teacher.
“It’s not enough, but it’s a start,” said Tierney, who added that it was a struggle simply to get enough money in the Head Start bill to fund the program, even though Republicans praise it. “We can’t get them to put the money behind it,” he said.
Tierney, who supported the bill when it came out of committee, ultimately voted against the amended version.
