Head Start's new start

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By MARGARET REIST / Lincoln Journal Star

Next month, Lincoln Action Program plans to open a new Head Start center near 13th and Arapahoe streets to provide care for 76 children for up to six hours a day.

The new center at 3258 S. 13th St. represents a change in the way the Lincoln Action Program handles Head Start money.  LAP will open its own center rather than contract with Cedars Youth Services and a home-based day care for the Head Start programs, as it has for the past eight years.

LAP, which is the recipient of all local Head Start funds, will continue to contract with Lincoln Public Schools and Saunders County. LPS operates mostly school-based programs for 408 children.

View Slideshow

Jackson Shreve, 2, pours milk with the help of Program Manager Jenny Fleming during lunchtime at Cedars Northwood Early Head Start Center in Lincoln. The Northwood center will close as a result of Cedars Youth Service losing Head Start funding, though students at the center could attend a Head Start center run by the Lincoln Action Program once the new center opens. (Gwyneth Roberts)

For Cedars, the change — and loss of Head Start money — means it will close one of its day care centers and no longer run the one in the downtown federal building.

“It’s a new experience for me to be telling families and our staff that there’s going to be this kind of disruption in their lives — not because of quality, not because of the financial make-up of our centers but because of the decision of another organization,” said Jim Blue, executive director and CEO of Cedars.

Both agencies are working with families whose children are eligible for Head Start to either move them to the new center or find a way to stay in the Cedars programs and receive home-based Head Start services, said Mary Afrank, LAP’s Head Start director.

LAP officials hope the change will better serve families by offering up to six hours a day of Head Start services, all of which will be paid for with money from the federal program.

“We’re hoping changing the model really will allow kids to remain in Head Start as long as they need it,” Afrank said.

The current system, in which many families rely on child care subsidies, doesn’t work as well because welfare reforms have made it harder for parents to get those subsidies consistently, Afrank said.

“All those (welfare) changes have really caused our Head Start program to be ineffective for children to be prepared for kindergarten,” she said.

When families lose the child care subsidies, they often have to drop out of the Head Start programs, Afrank said.

Blue, executive director and CEO of Cedars, denied that happened. He said his organization used donations and other funding sources to fill the funding gaps for families.

“I cannot remember a time when someone was denied care because of an inability to pay,” he said.

The loss of Head Start revenue left Cedars trying to figure out how to retain the quality child care it has now.

“We were faced with the question of how do we as a nonprofit organization absorb the loss of a $300,000 contract,”Blue said.

The Head Start money was used to help Cedars meet federal requirements, such as smaller child-teacher ratios. Cedars believes those standards make for better programs and wants to keep them, Blue said.

So Cedars officials decided to make more targeted cuts: no longer running the federal building center and closing the Northwood Center at 22nd and Y streets.

The Northwood Center serves about 25 children, most of whom are enrolled in the Head Start or Early Head Start programs. It will stay open until the end of March.

“It had a large percentage of low-income families there,” Blue said. “Without the Head Start partnership, financially, it just cannot stay open without a huge infusion of money.”

Cedars runs four child care centers in addition to the Northwood and federal building centers. It plans to expand the number of children it serves at two other centers, one downtown and the Northbridge center at 27th and Holdrege streets.

Cedars officials are working with Northwood staff to try to find them other positions and with families to either move to the new LAP center or other Cedars’ programs, Blue said.

The officials who run the federal building are committed to keeping a child care center open, and Cedars will work with them to find one, Blue said.

Whether that new provider serves as many low-income families remains to be seen, he said. Now 40 percent of the families at the federal building are low-income, he said.

Blue said his biggest concern was to the disruption to families the change would cause.

“My interest is in the families who’ve been most vulnerable through their economic condition, their social condition, and now all of a sudden have another point of major stress in their lives,” he said.

Afrank said she hoped the change would offer more continuity for children and help ensure they get the Head Start services they need.

The new center is neighborhood-based and easy to get to by a city bus line, she said.

“There’s lots of options, so for parents we just work with them to see which program is best,” she said.

Reach Margaret Reist at 473-7226 or mreist@journalstar.com.