Alexandria plans to apply for $400,000 in federal stimulus money to expand a program benefiting low-income children.
The federally funded Head Start program — which helps prepare preschool children from low-income households for elementary school — has 252 students. The money would allow the program to expand to 306.
The program has a waiting list of about 100, said Karen Hughes, the president and chief executive of the Campagna Center, which runs Alexandria Head Start. There is a huge demand for such programs in Northern Virginia because of the large immigrant population, she said.
Statewide, $1.8 million in stimulus funds is available for Head Start expansion programs for the two years beginning Sept. 1 and ending Aug. 31, 2011.
If additional funds are not available for the expansion after the two years, the program’s capacity would return to 252 children.
Hughes said the city has to be careful with any temporary stimulus funding, and that she did not want to expand a program that could not be supported. Any staffers funded through the two-year expansion grant would be kept on only if the city won more federal funding, city documents said.
But Debra Collins, assistant city manager for community and human services, said the city was committed to keeping Head Start, even if the proposed expansion had to be scaled back after 2011. She pointed out that the 3- and 4-year-olds who would benefit from the expansion would be out of the program by 2011.
Christina Satkowski, a program associate with the New America Foundation’s Education Policy Program, said it was important to increase toddlers’ access to pre-kindergarten programs such as Head Start.
With so many pre-K education programs available now, though, “finding ways to coordinate all these programs is very important,” she said.
“Many states and school districts recognize that pre-kindergarten and full-day kindergarten provide important foundations for educational success,” she wrote recently on the Early Ed Watch blog on New America’s Web site. “But these programs only get us halfway there. Pre-k investments will pay off only if they are backed up with a comprehensive plan to align standards and curricula through third grade and beyond.”
