Slowly
Reinvesting in Head Start
By Stephane Babcock
Two-thirds of the Head Start agencies responding to a recent STN survey say they are receiving ARRA funds, but what impact is the money making? When funding for Head Start was an-
nounced last winter as part of the Ameri- can Recovery and Reinvestment Act, more than one voice cheered. A program that leads the charge in helping to mold the future of more than 900,000 low-in- come, pre-school children in the U.S. was finally getting some much-needed and long-overdue funding. Included in the Head Start stimulus was
a provision that provided $350 million for quality improvements. According to a program instruction filed by the Office of Head Start last April, this included fund- ing for staff training. Of that chunk, only 10 percent could be used for transporta- tion purposes, and that was only after at least 50 percent of the quality improve- ment funding was initially used to im- prove employee compensation.
44 School Transportation News Magazine February 2010 Sounds confusing, doesn’t it? But that
didn’t stop local Head Start centers from figuring out a way to buy new school buses, according to a survey STN con- ducted late last year to gauge how the ARRA funds were trickling down to the local level. Of the 356 respondents that received some form of federal funding, more than 20 percent were able to turn that green into a yellow school bus. But,
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