$1.4 Million Given to New Britain for Head Start Program
HEADSTART
The New Britain Herald
Tia Albright
Boston University Washington News Service
October 24, 2006
WASHINGTON, Oct. 24– New Britain will receive $1.4 million in federal funds to help promote child development and increase educational initiative for low-income children.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Head Start program made the grant to aid the city’s effort to prepare children from low-income families for kindergarten, Sens. Christopher Dodd and Joseph Lieberman, both Democrats, announced Friday.
“Head Start enriches the lives of children and families by providing early learning to prepare them for school as well as health and comprehensive family services,” Dodd said. “These resources are essential and have proven to show great returns for millions of America’s children.”
Marlo Greppone, executive assistant for the Human Resources Agency of New Britain, said that low-income children who participate in the Head Start program enter kindergarten with confidence and are ready to learn in a structured environment because they have experienced it in the program’s classrooms.
“The money will help our agency continue to provide transportation and nutritional services, access to an on-site nurse to our students, and educational programming,” Greppone said.
New Britain’s Head Start program prepares children ages three to five for kindergarten by placing them in preschool classrooms where they learn to adjust to a school schedule and learn basic social skills at the same time they are taught the basic educational skills, including the ABCs and other beginning educational material.
“The main goal of the Head Start program is to provide services to low-income children in the New Britain community that will prepare them for school,” Greppone said.
In 2005 Connecticut received $51 million for Head Start and enrolled 7,126 children in the program. More than 21 million children nationwide have participated in Head Start since it begn in 1965.
“These new Head Start funds are a small investment in our children’s future, and will go a long way to giving our kids the boost they need to succeed in school,” Lieberman said.
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