Top, Yolanda Gonzalez, Actiing Director of the Community Action Partnership of Kern?s Head Start program, explains to skeptical parents how the decision was made to close the program here. In back (standing) Anne Weber, Coordinator or the Family Resource Center, listens. In front parents David Evans and Charlotte Deese consider their options. Bottom, Gonzalez speaks with reporter from Bakersfield?s Channel 29, which reported more about the angry questions than the solutions the parents have vowed to find. Early sign-up of qualified children is one of their primary goals.
By Patric Hedlund
Charlotte Deese and David Evans are very involved parents. Their daughter, Piper Deese-Evans, 4 is a kinetic bundle of blond hair, rosy cheeks and enthusiastic questions about the world. Four days a week she attends the Head Start classroom program that was started by Community Action Partnership of Kern (CAPK) a little over a year ago on the mountain.
The program provides socialization and "learning readiness" for little tykes. In a country lamenting about the failures of its public education system, statistics about the effectiveness of the Head Start programs nationwide are staggering: The single most dependable predictor of high school graduation and college attendance for low income or at-risk youth is whether or not they attended Head Start as toddlers.
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connel made speeches all over the state in January about the urgency of providing more Head Start access to very young children in order to close the "achievement gap" and to get the state’s children performing up to competent achievement test goals again.
So it was a great surprise to Charlotte Deese on Tuesday, Jan. 29 when she was handed a letter that said the Head Start classroom program in Frazier Park was to be closed down.
By the next day a group of parents had organized a meeting at the Family Resource Center to confirm they were determined that the program would not be closed.
By Friday, Feb. 1, they had the Acting Director of CAPK’s Head Start program, two reporters and a television camera in a meeting with them inside the Head Start classroom at Frazier Park School.
Gonzalez explained that there were three main reasons she had decided to terminate the Mountain Communities classroom program: Difficult commutes for the teachers who lived in Bakersfield; Lack of a bathroom within the facility made available by Frazier Park School; and need for assurance that there would be sufficient children qualified for the program who would be attending next year.
Parents listened quietly as Gonzalez and her staff presented information and told them that the agency intended to continue the homebased Head Start component offered by Anita Anderson.
When she was finished, well-considered questions from the parents began. They were focused on the fact that the decision to cancel was made without prior discussion with the parents about the perceived problems.
Anne Weber calmed the anger, saying, "There is no force as powerful as a focused community."
Parent Paul Luna said he was certain that there were qualified Early Childhood Education teachers on the mountain. Other parents said that if they had known of the staffing issues they would have been calling throughout the community to alert qualified teachers currently commuting to jobs in places like Santa Clarita who might want to apply for the local opportunity.
Gonzalez said she was stunned by how active the parents were willing to be.
"I’m new, and I guess I didn’t know this community," she said.
On Wednesday, Feb. 6, Luna said parents were already working together to address the issues. "We have all the paperwork ready, with applications for teachers. We are taking posters around town to recruit both teachers and students."
Interested parents and teachers can go to www.capk.org to secure applications for the early childhood education positions. The Family Resource Center in Frazier Park also has applications on hand for potential teachers as well as for families who wish to sign their children up in advance for next year’s Head Start class.
This is part of the February 08, 2008 online edition of The Mountain Enterprise.
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