Q&A
Federal Head Start Director Sanchez Fuentes Discusses School District Collaboration, Immigration Reform
By Ryan Gray e
Oct10_STN.indb 46
arlier this year the Office of Head Start within the U.S. Health and Human Services’ Adminis- tration of Children and Families began releasing details on its Head Start Road Map, which is de- signed to improve long-term school readiness for underprivileged pre-school students and
promote long-term success of the federal program. Prior to the July 4th holiday weekend, we spoke with
Yvette Sanchez Fuentes, the director of the Head Start pro- gram in Washington, D.C., to gauge what will be expected of local Head Start agencies with this new road map and how the feds will give direction. Te conversation turned to innovative learning programs that Head Start agencies can implement on board school buses to assist classroom activities and how Head Start might be able to collaborate with school districts to this end. Sanchez Fuentes also discussed how Head Start is lever-
aging to spend more than $2 million appropriated last year with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Ten, she shared her views on the controversial issue of immigra- tion reform and how it is affecting now and possibly in the future the ability of Head Start personnel to identify needy families and provide them service.
WHAT ISTHE HEAD START ROAD MAP, AND WHAT IS IT TRYING TO ACCOMPLISH? “One of the things that fits in, as we’re looking at
transportation again, we are revising the Head Start perfor- mance standards. In that, we held listening sessions across the country in December of last year. One of the challenges that many of the programs across the country have are re- lated to transportation. We know that they face a lot of challenges as far as meeting the transportation regulations, whether they choose to provide transportation or not. And we’ve heard a lot of comments from grantees across the country about whether or not we can be more flex-
46 School Transportation News Magazine October 2010 9/14/10 12:18 PM
ible when it comes to the transportation regulations with regards to transporting children. So we’re taking a serious look at that. We’re taking comments we received from grantees, from parents from other national organizations across the country and really analyzing those and figuring out how those will fit into the performance standards. An- alyzing comments from grantees, parents, other national organizations to see how those might fit into the next revi- sion of the performance standards. In 2007, the Head Start Act makes homeless families categorically eligible for Head Start. We know that for our Head Start programs that cur- rently do not provide transportation, this could become a big challenge if you end up having a high proportion of homeless families in your community. As we look at the revision of the performance standard, we’re really trying to take into account how they affect how programs imple- ment them at the local level.”
❝
We’re stressing to our Head Start
grantees that you have to enroll eligible families, and that’s based on the definition in the Head Start Act. Families in Head Start are income eligible, and that is the type of information and the type of documentation we need to make sure we’re serving the neediest families in those communities modified. ❞
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