Joining a School Supply Savings Purchasing Program Can Help With so many low-income children and their families in-need of the help that can come from early childhood education, it can be difficult for administrators to work with the limits that come with the annual Head Start program budget. In recent years, many local programs have had to rely on other ways to produce school supply savings, cut administrative costs and lower office or janitorial supply purchases in order to work with the federal Head Start budget cuts. Some programs were unable to achieve the required cuts and were forced to reduce space for local children, while others were forced to...

FoodSource Plus Provides Nutrition and Savings to Head Start One of the core components of running a program under the National Head Start Association is to provide participants with quality nutrition services. The Head Start Nutrition program provides guidelines based on all of the rules and regulations required by the USDA child and adult care food program. In addition to providing the children who participate in Head Start programs with nutritious meals, the goal is to create a social and educational experience at mealtimes to integrate discussion of food, health and daily activities as a means of improving communication and conversational skills. Responsibility and teamwork are also educational benefits from...

How to Reduce Head Start Budgets and Survive the Federal Cuts The past couple of years have been difficult for Head Start program administrators and the families across America who depend upon Head Start for nutritional, health and early learning programs. In light of cuts to the Head Start budgets by the federal government, many administrators have been forced to reduce Head Start budgets by cutting staff, reducing the number of spots available to needy families or by closing their doors completely. Costs Associated With Running a Head Start Program In addition to all of the costs associated with the daily administrative operations of a Head Start program, there are...

Why FoodSource Plus Helps the National Head Start Association With a team of professional, experienced and knowledgeable purchase management consultants on staff, a company like FoodSource Plus could do anything it wanted, help any industry and make millions doing it. However, the goal of FoodSource Plus is to be a service to non-profit organizations like the National Head Start Association and other human service programs to help make the world a better place. Studies show continually the benefits that come from early education programs. Many low-income children and families do not have access to quality preschools, making early learning services like Head Start even more valuable and important to help...

Learn to Manage Head Start Purchases and Save Your School It has been over a year since the 2013 sequestration budget cuts hit Head Start administrators with a limited set of choices: lower costs for Head Start by reducing staff and available spots for students or shut down. However, as many schools discovered, there was another option. Many administrators took a look at their existing budgets and decided to take the road less traveled and learn how to better manage Head Start purchases to cut expenses instead of cutting staff or spots for students. Quite a few schools were able to effectively lower costs for Head Start and stay open...

Study Proves the Long Term Benefits of Head Start Programs In response to questions about the value and effectiveness of early learning programs like Early Head Start and Head Start, a long term study was conducted that began back in the 1970s to show how children benefited and had greater success due to their participation. Greater success in school, test scores and even decreased involvement in crime for low-income children and families. The findings from the long term study confirm that Head Start administrators are on the right track and are having a positive influence on the lives of the children that participate in these programs. The Follow-up Study Results...

Head Start Programs Make Big Difference to Children In-Need While studies have shown that Head Start programs are beneficial to low-income children and their families across the board, there is a particular group that benefit from it more than others. Children who come from families where there is very little academic stimulation, with parents who do not read to children or provide very little encouragement with letter and number recognition or word pronunciation, really need programs like Head Start so they can get a good start when it comes time to go to school. Head Start programs have been proven time and again through actual participant studies to help under-privileged...

Original Creator of Head Start Dies in Massachusetts, age 93 A professor of pediatrics at John Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland back in the late 1950s, Dr. Robert E. Cooke worked with Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson to create the Head Start programs and other major initiatives for children. His involvement the Head Start programs came after he began working with Eunice Kennedy Shriver and her husband Sargent Shriver, after they discovered their mutual interest in helping children with disabilities. Dr. Cooke, who was also a father of two children with a chromosomal defect, began working as an adviser to the Shrivers and the Joseph P. Kennedy...

Fiscal Year 2015 Budget: Will It Affect Head Start Programs? As reports started coming in regarding the reaction from lawmakers to the President’s fiscal year 2015 budget, administrators of Head Start Programs began to wonder how the new budget and the cuts that will ultimately be proposed and made by lawmakers would affect early education programs. From the moment the budget blueprint was released, critics and opponents began talking about how it would have a hard time making its way through Capitol Hill, especially with this being an election year. That being said, experts believe that the President’s $3.9 trillion budget plan doesn’t even stand a chance of being enacted,...

More Funding Needed in Massachusetts for Head Start Programs Just a few weeks ago, it seemed as though the Head Start and Early Head Start budget crisis was over. Education program funding was supposed to be back on the rise, helping low income families right here in Massachusetts and across the country to get access to the early education programs that they so desperately need. However, a state budget meeting was held recently in which a group known as “Stand for Children,” came seeking an increase in funding for preschool programs in the state. Growing Wait List in Massachusetts The most recent count shows that over 40,000 low income families...