Giving Every Child the
Head Start They Deserve

Dear Fellow Vermonter,

On Tuesday, I was invited to speak to nearly 600 early childhood educators and leaders from the National Head Start Association’s conference. I was honored to be introduced by two Vermonters: Sandra Graves, director of Champlain Valley Head Start, and Christy Swenson, chair of the Vermont Head Start Association and director of Capstone Community Action’s Head Start program, which serves Bradford, Barre, Morristown and Randolph.

Ask any psychologist and they will tell you: The first five years of a child’s life are the single most important time for their development.That means that if we want our country to succeed, we must make sure that every child in America has access to high-quality early education.

Unfortunately, that is not happening in America today. For all the talk in Washington about how much politicians “love America,” for far too long the federal government has failed to adequately fund this critical stage of a child’s life.

If politicians love America, they must love America’s children and invest in their future. In the richest country in the history of the world, we cannot tolerate having the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major country on Earth. Today, 14 million kids don’t have enough to eat. More than 4 million kids do not have health insurance and millions more are underinsured. Hundreds of thousands of children are homeless each year. That is an outrage.

Over the last 60 years, Head Start has provided more than 40 million young children with high-quality early education, health care and nutrition. Research shows that children in Head Start are more likely to graduate from high school, go to college, succeed in the workforceand have better health outcomes. In Vermont, more than 670 Head Start educators and staff serve nearly 1,300 young children every year, supporting working class families in communities across our state.

What the educators I spoke to believe — and what I believe — is that every child in America deserves a high-quality early education. But rather than doing more to ensure Head Start programs can reach children and families nationwide, President Trump has worked to undermine it.

Since January, the Trump administration has illegally and dangerously disrupted funding for Head Start and other education programs, imposed needless red tape and shut down half of the regional Head Start offices that help local programs deliver high-quality services. These actions have left centers uncertain about whether they can pay rent, make payroll or even keep their doors open. That is unacceptable.

Making a bad situation worse, the president and congressional Republicans worked around the clock to hand out more tax breaks to billionaires while cutting billions of dollars in funding for education. At a time of massive income and wealth inequality, while millions of children go hungry and are denied the education they deserve, the last thing we should be doing is cutting taxes for the wealthiest Americans.

I have a different idea. Instead of undermining and cutting programs for children and families, we should be substantially expanding Head Start in America to reach every child. That is why after speaking to those Head Start leaders, I introduced a bill to fully fund Head Start for 11 million children and make enrollment easier for working class families.

At a time when the median child care worker earns just $13 an hour — less than a doggy day care worker or parking lot attendant — my bill would ensure early childhood educators are paid the living wages they deserve. No one in this essential profession should have to work two jobs just to make ends meet.

This bill would also:

• Align program hours with working families’ schedules during the school year and over the summer so that parents do not need additional child care;
• Expand transportation options to help kids to get to Head Start programs on time;
• Invest in facility upgrades so classrooms are safe and modern they are safe for our children; and
• Co-locate programs on college campuses to reach the more than 5 million student parents in America.    

Bottom line: If we can afford to give over a trillion dollars in tax breaks to the top 1% and large corporations, we can afford to expand Head Start to make sure that every working class kid in America has access to Head Start and every educator earns a living wage.

Sincerely,