By Lorelei Brush, Ph.D.,Sharon Deich, Kerry Traylor,and Nancy Pindus
Pelavin Research Institute and The Urban Institute
March 7, 1995
For the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation
Department of Health and Human Services
Background
Purpose of This Study
History of Full-Day Services in Head Start
Full-Day Services in the 1990s
Study Methodology
Approaches for Providing Full-Day Care
Shared Philosophies of Grantees
Issues of Program Substance
Issues of Funding
Issues of Program Management
Issues of Collaboration
Summary
Meeting the Needs of Head Start Families
Ensuring High-Quality Services for Children, Parents, and Staff
Creating Flexibility for Local Programs
Gathering Further Information
Summary
Westchester Community Opportunity Program
Western Kentucky University Child Care Consortium
New River Community Action, Inc.
Alachua County School Board
Miami Valley Child Development Centers, Inc.
West Central Development Corporation
Tulare County Child Care Educational Program
Puget Sound Educational Service District (ESD)
LIST OF EXHIBITS
Exhibit 1
Characteristics of Selected Sites
Exhibit 2
Programmatic Characteristics of Grantees
Exhibit 3
Fiscal Management Strategies
Exhibit 4
Funding Issues
Exhibit 5
Comparison of Issues in Three Approaches to Full-Day Care
Exhibit A-1
Characteristics of Selected Sites
Over the past 10 years, the number of low-income mothers with young children needing the services of full-day programs has increased dramatically. Many factors, including the adoption of the Job Opportunity and Basic Skills (JOBS) program, homelessness, and increased demands on the child welfare system have contributed to this growing need. In order to better serve their children and families, some Head Start grantees have developed programs to meet the requirements for longer hours of service.
The purpose of this study is to examine the ways in which full-day services are currently offered by a small group of Head Start Grantees. This study does not include all grantees that are providing full-day services, but it provides an in-depth look at eight grantees that fund extended hours by combining resources from a variety of sources. Factors considered in the selection of grantees include the geographic location of the grantee; the size of its funded enrollment and its full-day enrollment; the source(s) of funding used for the extended hours; and the structure of the full-day option. Data were collected during 2- day site visits to each grantee. In addition to the director of each program, fiscal staff, component coordinators, teaching staff, and staff from collaborating and other child care agencies in the community were interviewed.
Among the grantees, three distinct modes of service provision were utilized: (1) wraparound care, in which funding from sources other than Head Start is used to expand the core Head Start day; (2) wrap-in care, in which Head Start grantees contract with another child care provider and fund the set of services needed to allow the contracted program to meet Head Start standards; and (3) connected care, in which grantees contract with existing child care programs to provide children with supervised care before and/or after the Head Start day. Connected care providers are not expected to meet Head Start's Performance Standards. It should be noted that even among these grantees who are providing full-day care, children attending for a full day make up only a small part of the full enrollment in most of these programs.
In addition to the traditional Head Start portion of the day, each full-day provider had to develop a program for the extended hours. Four of the grantees had a short structured activity in the afternoon and scheduled free play for the rest of the time. The others found that structured activities were too often interrupted during the afternoon, as children left for the day. For these grantees, the time after naps and snack was spent exclusively in free play.
Grantees also had to find new and innovative ways to schedule parent activities, home visits, and teacher training. Whereas staff from part-day programs can work with parents during the day, staff in full-day programs cannot because parents with children in full-day programs are at work or in training during these times. Overall, grantees were quite successful at finding ways to integrate parent activities and home visits into the full-day programs, using such methods as scheduling visits and activities at convenient times for parents (e.g., during breaks between college terms, at the end of work shifts), constructing activities that could support the program but be done in the evenings or on weekends (e.g., prepare materials for an activity, help renovate a room), and keeping a log for each child in which parents and teachers make regular entries. Grantees were also creative in devising ways to provide training to full-day staff, including liberal use of substitutes and closing periodically for training days.
Unlike part-day programs that receive nearly all of their funding as a grant from Head Start, the grantees in this study were piecing together funding from a variety of sources to meet the requirements of a full-day program. A variety of issues regarding the coordination of funds came to light during the interviews.
Each grantee had to develop a strategy for allocating funding from their various funding sources. Among the eight grantees, five different strategies were employed. The first method, which is used by two of the sample's Head Start grantees, involves dividing costs among the participating agencies so that each agency alone pays for a particular line item. For example, one participating agency may pay all facilities expenses and Head Start may pay all non-facilities expenses. By keeping the funding separated, grantees greatly simplify the accounting process. The remaining four methods require the Head Start agency to manage multiple funding streams, but demonstrate different ways of allocating costs to funding sources. One grantee used no allocation formula at all; instead, this grantee pooled all of its funds into a single account from which all bills were paid. Another grantee assigned each line item to one funding source only, so that Head Start paid 100 percent of certain line items and its other source paid 100 percent of other items. Two grantees used a single allocation formula to divide costs across funding sources: all line item costs were allocated proportionally by number of children funded by each source or amount of income from each source. Finally, two grantees split costs across funding sources according to formulas tailored specifically for each item.
Other funding issues continue to hamper grantees in their ability to provide full-day services. Parental loss of eligibility for non-Head Start funding was a problem for all grantees. Receipt of full-day services is generally contingent upon parental employment status; parents must be working or in training to qualify for full-day services. When parents stop working or drop out of school, even temporarily, the children are no longer eligible for the funding that pays for the non-Head Start portion of the day. Grantees have developed different strategies to deal with this issue, but all feel that it is a continuing problem.
Retrospective reimbursements are also problematic for most grantees. Payments to cover the extended portion of the Head Start day are almost always reimbursed retrospectively. Cash- flow problems often arise as grantees need to pay their bills before the reimbursements are received. In this case, grantees either rely on sponsoring agencies to cover the shortfalls or borrow from one part of their program to pay for another.
Many grantees also struggle to keep their budgets in the black. The reimbursement rates received from many state and local sources are simply too low to cover the cost of following Head Start Performance Standards throughout the day. For example, child-staff ratios and staffing patterns that are allowable under these other programs often fail to meet Head Start requirements. Although grantees have found ways to provide the required funding to maintain Head Start quality, shortfalls that require financial assistance from sponsoring agencies still do occur.
For grantees using wrap-in or connected care, ensuring a high quality of care from contracted providers was at issue. For the wrap-in programs, all providers follow the Head Start Performance Standards throughout the day, and issues of quality, for the most part, are related to bringing new sites into compliance with the standards (new sites often need time to upgrade facilities and train staff). For the one connected care provider, where Head Start Performance Standards are not followed by contracted providers, the quality of these contracted programs is a major concern.
Finally, all grantees indicated an urgent need to fund additional full-day services for infants and toddlers. As more mothers seek employment, having the option of serving the younger siblings of Head Start children in the same facility is a necessity. This coupled with the multiple risks faced by many very young children points to the urgent need for earlier intervention.
The findings from this study point to the following issues for policymakers to address:
Although this study provided considerable information about the delivery of full-day services by drawing upon funding from multiple sources, many questions regarding the provision of full- day services for Head Start children and families still remain. For instance, neither this study nor Head Start data sources can provide information on the number of Head Start children who currently receive more than 8 hours a day of care or are in programs that run 12 months. Other important questions include: how do the various modes of care affect the well-being of the children; how do co-located services for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers affect family choices of care situations; and what impact does full-day service have on the self-sufficiency of families? Further research is required to respond to these questions.
INTRODUCTION
Background
Guiding the work of every Head Start grantee is the basic principle that all program services should be designed to meet the needs of families. Thus, before preparing a Head Start grant application, grantee staff conduct a community needs assessment. Then, in the application itself, staff describe the needs that exist and how those needs will be addressed by their program of services. In the assessments, many grantees note the numbers of parents who are in school or training programs and the number of mothers who are employed. In developing their programs, staff use this information to decide on the hours of service to be offered. Although the traditional Head Start day is between 4 and 5 hours long, if Head Start-eligible families have a high percentage of parents who are in school or training or who are employed, grantee staff can offer full-day services for children in order to meet the needs of those parents.
Purpose of This Study
Although Head Start does have legislative authority to pay for full-day services, programs of this type are rare and often limited to populations with special needs such as children of migrant workers. To provide additional full-day options, grantees have been encouraged to provide extended hours of care by pulling together funding from other Federal, state and local sources. As the Report of the Advisory Committee on Head Start Quality and Expansion indicates, "Although some directors have been successful in putting wrap-around services together, little is known about the quality of services or the continuity of care for the children." (p.16).<1>
In response to these concerns, the present study examines a variety of approaches for the provision of full-day services to children in the Head Start program. Because the study is a short-term project, its goal is to summarize (1) program services, (2) achievements, and (3) challenges faced by a small set of grantees. In particular, its objectives are as follows:
The remaining sections of Chapter I describe the history of full-day services in the Head Start program, the methodology of this study, the grantees who were included in the sample, and the approaches used to provide full-day care. Chapter II discusses findings in terms of the commonalities in philosophy and implementation of full-day services across grantees and the issues grantees confront in program management, program services for children, funding, and collaboration. Chapter III discusses the key policy choices for Federal staff, as more grantees elect to offer full-day services, and includes a set of research questions for further study. The site visit summaries are in Appendix A.
In the early days of Head Start, many grantees offered full- day, full-year care to children whose parents or caregivers were not in the home due to employment, illness, or other reasons. However, in the early 1970s, the number of grantees offering this option substantially declined, as Head Start focused on increasing the number of families served rather than on offering extensive services to a smaller number of families. Head Start grantees continued to offer full-day services but to a limited group that included children in migrant families and a relatively small number of nonmigrant families, where the need for such services was clearly documented. However, Federal staff no longer approved the offering of full-day services for all children on the basis of parent preference alone.
In the late 1980s, several phenomena within the United States generated a new call for full-day services for low-income children. First, and most strikingly, mothers across all income groups increased their participation in the labor force, which extended the demand for child care. Second, initiation of the Job Opportunities and Basic Skills (JOBS) Program meant that more low-income women were placed in school or training programs and, therefore, needed longer hours of care for their children. And finally, the increase in the number of homeless families meant a greater need for full-day services. Some homeless families housed in shelters were not allowed to remain in those residences during the day; many homeless mothers were busy locating service providers or potential employers during the day and therefore required safe places for their children to stay.
As grantees have responded to this growing demand for full- day programs for children, they have followed another important guiding principle. They have devised ways of meeting family requirements for longer hours of service by working in concert with other community agencies. As encouraged in the report of the Advisory Committee on Head Start Quality and Expansion, Head Start grantees are "forging partnerships" among community agencies to ensure that their families receive these important services.<2>
While in the 1970s programs that were offering full-day Head Start were funded entirely by the Head Start program and housed in Head Start centers, in the 1990s, grantees have developed a variety of approaches for providing full-day care. These approaches vary according to the following characteristics:
Grantees and Federal staff are aware of a variety of arrangements for full-day services, but most of the existing information is anecdotal, rather than comprehensive.
One potential descriptive resource is the Program Information Report (PIR) through which all Head Start grantees document services delivered each year. However, information on full-day services collected through the PIR is quite limited, and may not include all programs offering full-day services. The PIR suggests that both the number of grantees and the number of Head Start children offered full-day, full-year services is quite small. For the 1993-94 program year only 0.6 percent of all funded enrollment was for full-day, full-year services. More specifically, the PIR indicates that 376 grantees (27 percent) offered full-day services (more than 6 hours a day, 5 days a week) to 149,372 children in fiscal year 94. A total of 32 of those grantees (serving 4,448 children) operated for the full year (more than 11 months). The remainder (including migrant programs) were open only part of the year.
It is probable that these numbers incorrectly estimate the actual amount of full-day care that is sponsored or coordinated through Head Start. On the one hand, there is reason to believe that the numbers overestimate the amount of full-day care. The numbers include some children who receive services for more than 6, but for fewer than 8 hours a day, an amount Head Start defines as full-day care but does not cover a full day of parental employment and probably would not be counted as full-day care by child care providers outside Head Start.
On the other hand, there are reasons to believe that the numbers underestimate the amount of full-day care offered to Head Start children. The PIR question that elicits full-day enrollment only concerns children in the standard center-based model. Children in family child care homes or in locally designed options also may receive full-day services — but how many of these children there are is unknown. Finally, grantees are instructed to count as full-day children only those who are in Head Start for the full day. Children who are funded by Head Start for part of the day and by another source for the remainder of the day and children who are transported to a second location, even one paid for by Head Start, may not be included in the count.
To increase understanding of the number of grantees and the collaborations involved in the delivery of full-day services for Head Start children, the 1993-94 PIR asked grantees if they operated a "day care program" that provided additional hours of care for Head Start children, and, if so, what funding sources were used to pay for day care. A total of 406 grantees (30 percent) reported that they offer day care to Head Start children. This is a sizeable number of Head Start grantees, and it can be assumed that many Head Start children are receiving full-day care under this arrangement.
Of the grantees offering full-day services, the following numbers and percentages receive money from the sources listed:
A majority of grantees supplement Head Start dollars with SSBG funds and parent fees to pay for full-day services. Many who use other sources probably use CCDBG. Furthermore, state funds, charitable funds, and private noncharitable funds are tapped by about an eighth to a quarter of grantees who offer such services. The task of the current project is to document the various approaches that grantees are employing and the issues they face as they operate programs funded by these multiple sources.
Study Methodology
To accomplish the goals of the study, eight grantees whose programs could potentially represent different methods of providing full-day services were selected. To do so, existing materials describing full-day services were reviewed, including the following:
The issues described were carefully reviewed, and a list of potential grantees was generated.
Second, Federal Head Start staff in national and regional offices suggested which grantees might be visited. Combining the ideas generated from the aforementioned sources, a list of 57 grantees to possibly be included in the sample was drawn up. With the assistance of Federal staff members, 30 of the nominees were selected as the most promising candidates for site visits.
Third, an interview protocol was developed, and the 30 grantees were telephoned. Grantee directors were consulted to make certain that grantees were offering services to some or all children for a minimum of 8 hours a day and that services were offered during the summer, when site visits needed to be conducted. Funding sources and the methods of service delivery were investigated so that the final group of eight sites would represent different approaches to the delivery of full-day services.
Fourth, the list was reduced to eight grantees and four alternates that offered full-day services during the summer and differed according to the following criteria:
Following discussions with Federal staff, the final list of eight sites included the following:
Exhibit 1 illustrates site characteristics appropriately diverse in geographic location, urbanicity, and auspices. When compared to Head Start grantees nationwide, the eight selected for this study tended to serve more children than average. In addition, the full range of potential grantee sponsors is not represented by this group (i.e., the auspices did not include local or tribal governments). In other ways the grantees were quite representative.
One site is a small grantee, offering services to fewer than 250 children; two sites are medium-sized grantees, with 250 to 750 children enrolled; and five are large grantees, with more than 750 children served. Enrollment in the full-day option also varies — with three grantees serving fewer than 100 children, one serving 100 to 200, and four serving more than 200. The grantee agency offers full-day services in six of the sample organizations; delegate agencies also offer services in two instances. Contracted centers and homes are used by three sample agencies for the provision of full-day services. Finally, a wide variety of funding sources is used in addition to Head Start dollars, including Title IV-A (AFDC/JOBS), CCDBG, SSBG, state child care and education funds, and parent fees.
Each director was called to schedule a 2-day site visit. While on site, discussions were held with the Head Start director, fiscal staff, component coordinators, teaching staff in the full-day classrooms, staff from coordinating agencies, and, where possible, staff from other child care agencies in the community. Our questions concerned the following: (1) characteristics of the grantee and population served; (2) history of the full-day program; (3) current structure of full-day services (i.e., schedule and staffing arrangements); (4) nature of collaborative arrangements used to provide full-day services; (5) issues in the provision of full-day services (e.g., home visits, parent involvement, staff training); (6) fiscal arrangements and concerns; and (7) common challenges for policymakers.
Finally, site summaries for each of the grantees visited (Appendix A) were written, and the cross-site analysis that follows in Chapters II and III was prepared.
Approaches for Providing Full-Day Care
Following visits to the eight sites, it was found that the methods for providing full-day care could be classified into three groups. The first, and most frequent, was wraparound care, within which a grantee used Head Start monies to fund the core of its services and used funding from other sources to pay for care before and after the Head Start day. This method was used by the following six sites: Elmsford, NY; Bowling Green, KY; Dayton, OH; Moorhead, IA; Visalia, CA; and some of the services in Seattle, WA. As Head Start has promoted the use of wrap-around care for many years, it is not surprising that the majority of grantees in this study utilize this approach.
Second in frequency of use was wrap-in care, which means that a Head Start grantee contracts with another child care program and uses Head Start funds to extend the services the program offers to the point where it meets Head Start Performance Standards. This approach was used in Gainesville, FL, and in some of the services offered in Seattle, WA.
Third in frequency of use was a connected care method used in Christiansburg, VA. This grantee contracts with existing child care programs to provide children with supervised care before and after the Head Start day, but these "connected" providers are not expected to meet Head Start Performance Standards or to provide services beyond child care.
Of course, there are differences among grantees and differences within each approach — especially in terms of location of services (centers or homes) and sources of funding. However, as discussed in the next chapter, there are many commonalities in the issues faced by grantees employing similar approaches and more differences across grantees using varying strategies. For example, the grantee using connected care expressed concern about the quality of services in the contracted centers and homes not asked to meet Head Start Performance Standards; however, this was not noted as a concern for the grantees using wraparound or wrap-in services.
On the other hand, grantees using wraparound services expressed concern about the long working hours of teachers who have moved from part-day to full-day services. Questions included the following: "What is the best way to schedule staff time while providing sufficient planning opportunities during the day?" "How can we deliver the level of staff training to full- day staff that we provide for part-day staff?" "When these teachers accomplish home visits after hours, how do we provide them with compensatory time off during the day?" These questions did not generate concern from directors in the wrap-in or connected care arrangements, because Head Start staff are only working with children part of the day, which has been true in the past for most Head Start teachers.
As findings are described in the next two chapters, these three approaches to providing full-day services will frequently be referenced. Discussions generally concern the similarities of grantees within a group, but, where important, the text describes the differences among those grantees.
Grantees that have been able to put together full-day options for families have had to break new ground in many places. They have had to revise the management of their programs, grapple with issues of program substance, explore new avenues for funding, and collaborate with other child service providers in ways that were not required when Head Start was paying the full cost of their programs. This chapter describes the program services, successes, and challenges faced by eight grantees that are providing full-day services to Head Start children. The chapter begins with a discussion of the common philosophies of the grantees and then goes on to describe (1) issues of program substance, (2) issues of funding, (3) issues of program management, and (4) issues of collaboration that are particular to the provision of full-day services.
In reviewing the information collected during the site visits, it was apparent that the grantees and directors participating in this study have more in common than the fact that their programs offer full-day services. These directors share a philosophy about the need for providing quality care to all children in their communities. Although each of the eight directors we visited runs a high-quality program, none view their mission as complete. Instead, they are continually striving to improve their programs and to provide care to a wider range of low-income children.
This philosophy of striving to provide quality services to low-income children includes participation in the broader child care and social services community. Forging alliances with other child care agencies as well as other social service providers is viewed as an integral part of directors' jobs. All directors are active participants in their community needs assessments and are on planning boards for activities related to service provision for low-income families.
Challenging and changing rules and regulations that stand in the way of improving services is also common practice for these directors. For instance, most of these directors have worked through the political process, both at the state and local level, to change reimbursement rate policies for child care. Likewise, many directors have worked with regional staff as well as other funding sources to simplify accounting requirements.
And finally, in the course of the site visit interviews, each director expressed concern about the lack of quality care for infants and toddlers. Five of the grantees were already serving some infants and toddlers and one had rented space in a center that provides care for these age groups.
Although infants and toddlers fall outside the purview of the traditional Head Start target population, the lack of care for these groups both directly and indirectly affects Head Start for two reasons. First, when siblings have to be placed in different care arrangements from one another, the logistics of getting the children where they need to be can stand in the way of parents successfully completing training programs or maintaining employment. All of the directors look forward to the introduction of the new Early Head Start initiative that will serve this group. Yet, at the same time, they stress the urgency of the need for infant and toddler care.
Second, the directors indicated that a growing number of children now being served by Head Start are from very troubled families. The number of homeless children as well as the number of children with drug- or alcohol-abusing parents has soared during the past 10 years. These situations, compounded by living with the threat of violence in many neighborhoods, have left children more vulnerable at a younger age. Several directors indicated that the sooner services (i.e., Head Start) are provided to these children, the better the chances are at improving outcomes. One director reported that by the time these vulnerable children qualify for Head Start, when they turn 3 years old, the level of services required is so high that these children become a drain on the system; it makes more sense both in terms of outcomes and costs to serve these children at a younger age. The directors look forward to Head Start's entry into this arena, yet at the same time feel that not enough is being done in the short-term.
As Head Start grantees move toward providing full-day services, there are a series of issues related to the Head Start program itself that need to be addressed and, in some cases, modified to fit the full-day agenda. Exhibit 2 provides information for each of the issues discussed across grantees.
Whether and how to structure afternoon activities for full- day children is an issue each grantee has to address. Each director was asked about the types of afternoon activities the children are engaging in. Four of the grantees reported that the children are involved in some type of structured learning activities in the afternoon (Exhibit 2). For programs that have some structured afternoon activities, these activities usually involve a short circle-time activity and then a continuation of a morning small group activity.
For the other grantees, afternoon activities are unstructured. In these programs, the directors indicated that scheduling any structured activities in the afternoon is difficult for two reasons. First, children begin to be picked up by their parents as early as 3:00 p.m. This causes a disruption in activities both for those leaving and those staying. And second, children begin to tire in the later part of the day making it more difficult to focus on and complete their projects. One director, for example, indicated that all children are picked up by 3:30 p.m. By the time the children finish their naps, have a snack, and have gone to the bathroom, there are only a few minutes left before the end of the day. Planning afternoon activities is not feasible in this circumstance.
[Exhibit 2 here is a chart of the programmatic characteristics of grantees visited for the study.]
All directors who participated in this study expressed the sentiment that home visits are an integral part of Head Start. Scheduling home visits in full-day programs, however, is problematic for all grantees. Whereas staff from part-day programs often conduct home visits in the afternoons, parents with children in full-day care are at work or in training during this time. For these families, home visits have to be conducted in the evenings or on weekends.
Evening visits, however, are difficult to arrange; parents are tired, staff have already worked 8 hours; and visiting certain neighborhoods at night jeopardizes the safety of the staff. In response to these difficulties, five grantees allow "home" visits to take place at the centers, though only as a last resort (Exhibit 2). They feel that center visits are better than no visits at all. The most common way for grantees to compensate teachers for after-hours home visits is by providing staff with compensatory time. The realities of the full-day schedule, however, make it difficult for teachers to actually take this time off.
Parent activities are also difficult to arrange for parents who are at work or in training. With the exception of Moorhead, IA, grantees have had to find ways to fit parent activities into the busy lives of working parents. In Moorhead, parent involvement activities are a requirement from Job Corps, the program cosponsor. Job Corps requires that each parent spend the morning in Head Start one week of each month; volunteering in the Head Start classroom is built into the Job Corps schedule.
The other grantees have created opportunities for parent involvement that are tailored to the needs of the parents. For instance, one grantee located on a university campus, set up a computer lab where parents can stop by between classes and practice keyboarding or word processing skills. Another hosts a Parent Seminar day for working parents on a weekday. Others use breaks in training programs or non-work hours for scheduled parent activities. Holding regularly scheduled weekend "fix-up" days at the centers and scheduling parent involvement activities more intensively during semester breaks are two other ways activities have been modified for full-day parents. And finally, one grantee with family child care providers holds meetings at their homes. This not only is more convenient for the parents but also provides an atmosphere that is friendly and familiar.
In addition, several grantees have developed parent activities that can be done at home. In one case, each full-day Head Start child has a log in which the teacher writes daily. The logs go home with the children twice a week. The parents can simply read the logs, respond to something that was written by the teacher, or write a note of their own with comments or questions for the teacher. Information in the logs helps both teachers and parents provide the best care for the children.
Grantees also try to encourage parents of full-day children to participate on policy councils. All grantees open policy council membership to parents of full-day as well as part-day children. Some have slots reserved for this group. However, the already hectic and stressful lives of full-day parents do sometimes limit their interest in taking on added responsibilities, such as participating on the policy councils.
Scheduling regular inservice and preservice training for full-day classroom staff has also created challenges for the grantees. Although part-day Head Start programs can provide training in the afternoon or can close the center for a training day, programs serving children of working parents cannot do this without disrupting parent schedules. The grantees in this study have come up with several ways to provide training time for their full-day staff. These include using substitute teachers, providing onsite training, and closing the center for several days to provide intensive periods of training.
Six grantees use substitutes to allow classroom staff to attend training during regular scheduled class time (Exhibit 2). Several of the directors indicated that they hire substitutes only as a last resort. For the most part, grantees rely on other center staff to act as substitutes during training times. Other staff includes part-day Head Start teachers and teacher aides, part-time aides, center supervisors, and family service workers.
Providing more on-site training is another method frequently used to train full-day staff. For instance, one grantee uses Technical Assistance Support Center staff and university personnel as mentors, working with teachers in the classrooms. Two other grantees conduct training at the centers during naptime.
Five grantees close at some point during the year to provide time for training. Three grantees close for one to two intensive training days each year. Two others close for one week for the same purpose. Yet another grantee has developed a unique system to support training of its full-day staff. Each year this grantee closes for one week of "forced" vacation. Throughout the year, the grantee holds training sessions on Saturdays. For every hour of training attended, the teachers are credited with an hour of paid vacation that can be used during this one-week period.
Unlike part-day programs where one set of teachers can provide continuous care, programs operating eight or more hours need to hire additional staff and coordinate schedules to cover the extended hours. Six of the grantees hire full-time staff who are expected to work 8-hour shifts. The staff stagger their starting times to cover the entire day. For instance, one staff member may start at 7:30 a.m. and work until 4:00 p.m., the second staff member may start at 8:00 and work until 4:30, and the third may start at 9:00 and end at 5:30. The exact hours vary both within and across grantees depending on the needs of each particular center and classroom. All of these programs supplement full-time staff with part-time help. The part-time assistants help out, as needed, sometimes covering early morning and late afternoon hours as well as acting as substitutes to free teachers for training and home visits.
Another staffing plan used by one grantee involves hiring two sets of full-time staff, one for the morning and one for the afternoon portions of the program. These full-time staff spend 6½ hours in the classroom per day, with the remaining 1½ hours used for planning and home visits. In addition, two part-time "morning only" teachers cover the hours before 8:00. When these "morning only" staff are relieved by full-time staff, they fill in for teachers in other classrooms so the teachers can have their planning time.
The grantee that offers part-day Head Start and then transports children to another facility — the connected care arrangement — also uses two separate sets of staff, one hired by Head Start and the other not.
True to the intent of Head Start, each of the grantees has pulled together funding from Federal, state, and local sources to provide full-day services. Some use only 2 sources of funding to pay for full-day services and others use as many as 17. No two grantees use the same combination of funding and, as a result, each has developed its own way to manage and account for revenues and expenditures.
Among the eight grantees visited, there were five variations in the ways funds from various sources were managed (Exhibit 3). It was expected that allocating costs from multiple funding sources would pose accounting complexities for the grantees. What was found, however, was that with one exception, the grantees that received funding from many sources had worked out one or another method to simplify the accounting and reporting process. Finding ways to simplify the allocation process highlights again the leadership qualities of these directors. In many cases, negotiations with state officers and regional Head Start staff were required to approve allocation procedures. Solutions were found, in large part, due to the persistence and creativity of these directors.
The first of the five methods, which is used by two grantees, involves dividing costs among collaborating agencies. Under this scenario, Head Start and its collaborators decide up front which source will pay for what functions, and those sources then pay their costs directly. The grantees use Head Start funds to cover assigned "Head Start" costs only: They manage funds from this single funding source alone. By keeping the costs separate, grantees greatly simplify the accounting process.
One grantee using this strategy (Moorhead, IA) has a written agreement with Job Corps stipulating that Job Corps will pay for all facilities-related costs and the salaries of the cook and the secretary. Job Corps pays these costs directly, and the Head Start grantee pays for the remaining costs of operating the full- day program.
[Exhibit 3 here is a chart of grantee fiscal management strategies.]
The other grantee using this strategy (Seattle, WA) has created agreements with its subcontractors — child care centers and family child care homes — so that the grantee iscies) handle monies from multiple sources.
In the other four strategies, Head Start grantees manage monies from multiple sources, but allocate the costs in different ways. One grantee (Elmsford, NY) has worked out a fiscal management strategy that does not require cost allocation of line items: All revenue is pooled into a single account from which all expenses are paid. This system has been approved by the state as well as by the Head Start regional office.
Another grantee (Christianburg, VA) has separated line items into groups: Some line items are allocated totally to one source and others to another source. In fact, Head Start funds pay for all line items but one, "child care costs." This is paid by the CCDBG grant.
Two of the grantees use a single allocation formula to assign the costs of all line items across all funding sources. In one case (Visalia, CA), the formula reflects the proportion responsible for paying a certain set of "Head Start" costs and the subcontractors (non-Head Start agen of funding from each of the sources (i.e., 63 percent of all costs are allocated to Head Start, 22 percent to general child care, and 15 percent to state preschool). In the other case (Gainesville, FL) the formula is based on the percentage of children participating in each funding source's program (65 percent Head Start and 35 percent state prekindergarten). In each case, all line items are allocated according to the formula, whether or not the funding source specifically requires that line item expenditure. For example, the cost of a social services coordinator is allocated across all sources, even though state programs may not require the services of such an individual.
Finally, two grantees use multiple allocation formulas. In one instance (Dayton, OH), some line items (e.g., teachers, supplies) are assigned wholly to one funding source, and other shared line items (e.g., food, custodial services) are allocated by formula across funding sources. In the other instance (Bowling Green, KY), each line item is allocated to funding sources according to the proportion of it benefiting children paid for by each funding source. Multiple formulas are required, and the director has carefully examined each item to determine its appropriate formula. The director maintains that, technically, wraparound programs such as hers must prorate every cost item, and she reported that the national Head Start office has not provided the degree of clarity or support on allocations for full-day costs that would allow grantees to experiment with simplified accounting methods.
For five of the eight programs (see Exhibit 4), receipt of full-day services is generally contingent on parental employment status; parents must be working or in training for their children to qualify for full-day services.<7> For these grantees, when parents stop working or drop out of school, even temporarily, their children become ineligible for other sources of funds that are used to pay for the expanded Head Start hours. The programs need to find other funds to pay for these children or drop them from the full-day programs.
Each grantee has developed its own way to deal with this situation, realizing that it faces a difficult dilemma. Keeping the children in full-day slots makes the most sense for the child (the benefits from continuity of care are well documented). On the other hand, there are many other parents who are at work or in training and struggling to find quality full-day care for their children. Why should these children be denied full-day services when the children who are no longer eligible could go home to their parents?
Three grantees indicated that when parents lose eligibility, they try to find funding to keep children in full-day services. If they are unable to do so, the child goes to a half-day program. A fourth grantee automatically transfers children to a part-day program when changes in a parent's work/school status cause a child to become ineligible for full-day services. The remaining grantee (a connected care provider) must discontinue the extended care services unless the parents can pay for this care themselves.
[Exhibit 4 here describes funding issues faced by grantees.]
Changing eligibility also causes other financial complications for grantees. If programs are not notified about parental ineligibility in a timely manner, grantees continue to provide services. When the grantee later submits a voucher for reimbursement, payment is denied. The grantee has provided the service and paid the staff and other expenses, but is ineligible for reimbursement. In this situation, grantees are left "holding the bag."
For example, at one site, the grantee staff reported having difficulties due to eligibility-related phenomena, in a variety of circumstances. These include the following:
For six of the eight grantees we visited, payments to cover the extended portion of the Head Start day are reimbursed retrospectively (see Exhibit 4). These retrospective reimbursements often cause cash-flow problems when expenses need to be covered before funding is received. Some grantees deal with this situation by temporarily shifting funds from another part of their program until the reimbursements come in. Other grantees rely on their sponsoring agencies to bail them out. All of the directors who are subject to retrospective reimbursements feel that this situation is a continuing problem that consumes significant amounts of time and energy.
In one case, it was reported that reimbursements have been a growing problem for contracted providers. The state subsidy is paid on the basis of daily attendance. Enrollment figures are reported to the state in June but the subsidy is not paid until August. Because August is the month of large increases in enrollment and cost as parents plan for the upcoming school year, the amount received as reimbursement is significantly below costs to be incurred. The contracted providers are in the process of working out an arrangement with the state that will allow child care providers to estimate the numbers of children they will serve and get paid in advance.
For grantees that rely on many funding sources to cover the expenses of full-day programs, shortfalls and late payments often produce situations in which there is not enough money to pay the bills. This may be a temporary phenomenon resulting from a delay in reimbursements or a more long-term problem that results from costs simply exceeding revenues.
The grantees participating in this study have devised a variety of options to deal with this situation. For the one grantee where child care reimbursement rates exceed Head Start allotments, the only time the grantee faces a funding shortfall is when children leave the program before replacements can be enrolled. For days when the program is "short on children," expenses continue to be realized (the teacher must be paid regardless of the number of children in the room) but reimbursements for the children present do not cover costs. In this circumstance, the grantee relies on its sponsoring agency (the superintendent of schools) to pick up the tab.
Other programs indicate that reimbursement rates from some Federal sources are simply too low to maintain a program that meets Head Start Performance Standards throughout the day. For instance, child-staff ratios and staffing patterns that are allowable under these other programs often fail to meet Head Start requirements. In some of these cases, parent fees are used to make up the difference between reimbursement rates and costs. Even with additional fees, one director still occasionally runs into short-term cash shortages and relies on the grantee's sponsoring agency as payer of last resort.
Other grantees make ends meet by collecting funds from more than one source to pay for full-day services. In places where full-day reimbursements are available for 25 hours or more of care per week, grantees can sometimes collect full-day reimbursement for the non-Head Start portion of the day. To illustrate, if a child is in a full-day program for nine hours a day, four of those hours are considered Head Start hours and are fully funded by Head Start: In addition, the child is eligible for full-day reimbursement for the remaining five hours. Grantees pursuing this strategy indicate that they need this additional funding to maintain Head Start quality throughout the day; reimbursements from other sources are almost always too low to maintain Head Start standards.
Until recently, one grantee relied on additional full-day funding to avoid chronic funding shortages for its infant-toddler program. These children's care was paid for entirely through the state's publicly funded child care account, but the money did not cover all the expenses of the program. Therefore, grantee staff asked each AFDC-eligible parent with a child in Head Start full- day care to apply for publicly funded child care money. For accounting purposes, the grantee defined Head Start as a 4-hour program and in addition, collected a full day of child care subsidy because the children were provided care for 5 hours longer than the designated Head Start time. This additional payment more than covered the costs of full-day services for 3- to 5-year-olds. Any funds that were not spent for 3- to 5-year- olds were placed in a special corporate account. At the end of the year, when the monies became general corporate funds, the grantee used them to offset the loss that its books showed for the infant-toddler program.<8>
Yet another, faced with a similar problem, continues to collect full-day reimbursements for the non-Head Start portion of the day. Grantees that are collecting full-day reimbursements for the part of the day that is not financed by Head Start indicated that they have been operating within the rules established by the funding sources when requesting reimbursements.
Four grantees collect parent fees to cover the portion of the day that is not funded by Head Start. For some, these fees are required by other funding sources. All fees are income- contingent. One director mentioned that parent fees are an important source of revenue but generate a conflict for the program when Head Start parents are delinquent in their payments. These situations force the director to abandon her role as family advocate and adopt the role of debt collector in order to meet the program's expenses. Yet another director facing the same circumstance, indicated that the staff were uncomfortable with their collection responsibilities.
In-kind contributions are an important source of revenue for Head Start grantees. How much of non-Federal share, if any, should be prorated between Head Start and other funding sources has been an issue only for the grantee that allocates each line item. The director pointed out that if she prorates in-kind facilities donations, a significant portion of the grantee's in- kind contributions, she would have to find other ways to meet in- kind requirements. Because no other funding sources require in- kind contributions, the director now allocates the entire amount to Head Start. Again, the director feels that some guidance from the Head Start national office would be helpful on this issue.
Grantees that provide full-day services are also grappling with how to provide equitable compensation to all classroom teachers—both teachers paid by Head Start as well as those paid by other sources. In general, the grantees have attempted to find ways to fairly compensate all staff. This has been a problem for some grantees because Head Start can and does provide salary increases that outpace increases and adjustments from other sources.
All grantees have devised systems that attempt to equalize pay for all teachers. Some of the grantees have a single pay scale and pass the raise on to all employees (see Exhibit 4). For example, one grantee passes raises on to all employees using the standard allocation formula devised for all budget line items.
Others try to match Head Start salary increases with funding from other sources. In one case, the grantee has been able to match all Head Start raises with monies from other sources in order to maintain equity in pay. In another case, a grantee attempts to use resources obtained through its collaborators to maintain comparable salaries.
A third approach to pay equity has been to devise a unified pay classification system for all teachers and other child care providers. When the director is able to, she assigns less experienced teachers with lower salary rates to non-Head Start classrooms. She can then legitimately pay more to Head Start teachers because they have more experience and more duties, such as home visits and parent involvement activities.
Pay equity has been a difficult issue for some connected care providers. These providers feel they are treated unfairly because they are paid less than the Head Start teachers. The grantee has no way to equalize salaries, because the connected care providers receive funding to care for Head Start children from a third party. The director feels that issues of pay inequity fuel petty complaints by some connected care providers and may cause these providers to treat Head Start children not as well as non-Head Start children.
Building on Head Start to provide full-day programs also requires grantees to deal with management-related issues, including finding and preparing facilities when using multiple funding sources and ensuring quality care from contracted providers.
Several issues related to facilities limit grantees' ability to expand full-day services. In many ways, the facilities issues for full-day programs are no different from those faced by part- day programs looking to expand services. Yet differences do exist. First, by running double sessions, part-day programs can serve twice as many children in the same space as full-day programs. Second, full-day programs need to be conveniently located for parents who are working or in training; parents faced with tight work schedules need facilities convenient to main routes or public transportation. And third, licensing requirements may include larger per student space requirements for full-day programs. Classrooms need to be large enough to set up cots or allow other sleeping arrangements for naptime.
One grantee reports that finding facilities that meet licensing requirements is a major obstacle. For this grantee, local land values prohibit the purchase of facilities even though Head Start now allows this activity. Rental property, which is also scarce, is so expensive as to be prohibitive. The director is continually looking for space to rent and sees this lack of facilities as the grantee's largest obstacle to expanding full- day services.
Other grantees indicated that the costs of renovating or installing portable or modular buildings requires more up-front funding than they can afford. The alternative to the grantee's paying for these costs is to find a funding partner. The directors report that grant writing, which can take up significant amounts of time, is often without a payoff — they do not get the funding. Several directors felt that writing grants was not the best use of their time.
Still another grantee had trouble fulfilling the requirements and gaining approvals for extensive renovations required to convert an old college dormitory to a child care facility. When Head Start entered into an agreement with Job Corps, all decisions regarding renovations of the facility had to be approved by both organizations. The directors of Head Start and Job Corps reported that approvals were required from regional and national offices of both programs and that Federal staff often did not agree with one another. This greatly slowed down the renovation process and required considerable time and energy on the part of the Head Start and Job Corps directors. In fact, it took nearly 2 years to complete the renovations of the center — a delay of nearly 1 year — due in large part to continual problems in approving small changes.
Grantees have begun to work closely with local licensing agencies in order to facilitate the process of opening new full- day facilities. For example, one grantee chose to purchase modular buildings, which are designed especially for the provision of full-day Head Start. Staff sent the proposed blueprints to the licensing agency in advance of the purchase to ensure that all licensing requirements would be met.
Another management-related issue that was raised during the site visits was assessing and ensuring quality care when contracted providers are involved. For grantees that use the wrap-in care model, all contracted providers indicated a desire to follow Head Start Performance Standards throughout the day. Quality in these programs is assessed using standard Head Start tools — the Self-Assessment Validation Instrument (SAVI) and On- Site Program Review Instrument (OSPRI). However, it became apparent that for new providers, meeting all Head Start standards, especially those related to facilities and training, takes some time. One grantee reported that new providers often did poorly on their first OSPRI because of the level of changes required to comply with all Head Start Performance Standards. It was suggested that allowing flexibility in the time frame for meeting standards for new wrap-in providers would help bring them into full compliance with Head Start standards and practices.
Quality of services provided is, however, a major concern for the one grantee we visited that uses the connected care model. In the case of connected care situations, Head Start does not have any say in how the connected programs are run and to what standards of quality they conform. The director felt that the quality of care provided by many connected providers would not meet Head Start standards because, in large part, many higher-quality providers in the area would not care for Head Start children because of the low reimbursement rates set by the state for use by Head Start grantees in connected care situations. Yet the director felt she had no choice but to use lesser-quality providers because lesser-quality care was better than no care at all.
Collaboration is the means by which each of the eight grantees has been able to organize and fund its full-day programs. Some of the grantees have formalized arrangements with other agencies and providers and other grantees rely on informal networks to help maintain the full-day classrooms. Entering into partnerships with other agencies and programs appears, for the most part, to be working well. Some of this success is due to the high profile the directors have within the larger child care community; collaborating with other agencies and programs is how these directors do business.
Problems stemming from collaborations usually arise from the need to report to multiple bureaucracies and funding sources that each have their own rules and regulations. Grantees have described differences in income guidelines, attendance policies for reimbursement, and eligibility as other areas where multiple requirements become an administrative burden.
Each of the eight grantees visited has successfully built full-day services for a group of Head Start children. The directors of the wraparound and wrap-in programs believe that their services meet Head Start Performance Standards throughout the day; the director of the connected care model strives to build partnerships with high-quality providers but does not always succeed because of the relatively low reimbursement rate she is authorized to pay.
Grantee staff reported their solutions to the issues of structuring group learning activities in the afternoon, conducting all required home visits, involving parents in the program, providing training to classroom staff, scheduling the work hours of classroom staff to cover the full day, managing multiple funding sources, and creating lasting interagency collaborations. Potential barriers in the funding area were the most significant for grantees, including the loss of a child's eligibility for funding due to a change in parental status, problematic cash flow when funding sources reimbursed expenditures, and insufficient revenues to cover costs. At the least, grantee staff work closely with staff from other funding sources to ensure the necessary cash flow. When it is possible, grantees create agreements for payment of services that ease the burden on them (e.g., arrangements that divide the costs among agencies so line items need not be allocated, agreements that cost allocation for each line item should follow a single formula, or an agreement that costs need not be allocated at all).
One common characteristic of these grantee directors was a willingness to question "the system." If they faced a barrier to the delivery of high-quality services to children and families, they found a way to overcome it. Most have the energy and ability of entrepreneurs to build a successful venture and keep on striving to make it all it can be — the best possible service for children and families.
In all likelihood, Head Start programs across the country will be following in the footsteps of the eight grantees that we visited as they forge partnerships with other agencies and programs to offer full-day services to their families. Throughout this process, grantees will be looking toward the Federal office for guidance in designing and supporting these new efforts. This study provides information about the barriers to service provision that are associated with three different approaches to providing full-day services. Exhibit 5, which summarizes some of the main findings from this study, was designed to assist policymakers in thinking about the characteristics of each model and their implications for both the grantees and Federal staff.
In this chapter, planning and policy choices for Federal Head Start administrators are organized into three groups, according to the principal themes discussed by grantee staff who deliver full-day services:
Each of these themes recurs frequently in discussions of the philosophy and implementation of Head Start, whether written in the Head Start Performance Standards or spoken in meetings or conferences. It is the purpose of this chapter to tie these themes to particular issues and actions within the offering of full-day Head Start services.
Following a discussion of these themes is a description of further research activities that can enhance our understanding of full-day Head Start services.
Meeting the Needs of Head Start Families
Head Start is based on the premise that its services must meet the needs of both children and families. Its goal is to help families become more self-sufficient. Its components, for example, cover required services in the education and health areas for children and in the social services and parent involvement areas for adults. But many of the funding sources that are used by grantees to extend the Head Start day are more narrowly focused on funding the child care that is necessary for the adult to be involved in a job or in a training program. These other programs do not focus on the comprehensive needs of the child and of the family. Specifically, AFDC/JOBS focuses on supporting one aspect of the transition of adults from welfare to work by funding child care so that parents are able to attend training programs or school and engage in job search activities. Likewise, CCDBG child care funding is designed to serve the child care needs of low-income working parents by providing a safe environment for their children.
However, the desire to meet the needs of families creates three principal difficulties for Head Start grantees that use wraparound or wrap-in funding. First, judgments of child eligibility for services that depends on the activities of the parent all too often results in a lack of stability for the child. Pulling together funding from a variety of sources can and does lead to the situation where a child may have to switch care arrangements — from a full-day to a part-day program — in the middle of the year due to parental loss of eligibility for service. For instance, when an AFDC/JOBS parent registers for a course, enters the child in a full-day Head Start class, and then discovers the course has been cancelled, his or her child may have to be moved to another classroom or program because AFDC/JOBS will not, under these parental circumstances, pay for the child's care. Likewise, when a parent completes school or a training program and is looking for work, AFDC/JOBS will pay only for care that is reasonably related to the parents activity; in many states, this practice means part-day care and that the child's care situation has to change.
To promote the ability of grantees to serve the need of children to have a stable long-term program of services, grantee staff would like guidance from Head Start concerning approved actions they can take. Would it be possible for Head Start to pay for a child's full-time placement when the parent is waiting for a program to begin, is in a hiatus between parts of a continuing program, or is engaged in a job search? For instance, Head Start grantees might request part-day funding for Head Start, with the intent of using wraparound or wrap-in funding for full-day services, and might request an allotment of funds for full-day services for any family in a hiatus in funding. Perhaps these issues can be addressed directly in the forthcoming guidance (NPRM) from Head Start on the new IV-A regulation.
Second, when Head Start staff know the circumstances of a family, sometimes staff believe that the child and family would significantly benefit from a full-day program, yet the family does not qualify under the requirements of other funding sources. The instances in which grantee staff make this observation could be broadly subsumed under the rubric of "significant family stress." For example, if a parent is struggling with a drug problem and the child is frequently with a grandparent or a neighbor who is having trouble providing continual care, grantee staff may wish to place the child in a full-day classroom. Homeless children and those served by child protective services might also fall into this category. Yet the family may not qualify for any wraparound funding. The suggestion from grantees, then, is that Head Start extend the approved list of reasons for children to be placed in full-day classrooms to include instances of significant family stress (as determined by grantee staff).
The family need for convenience in care arrangements is imbedded in the reality of the time constraints on parents when they must deliver their children to child care or school in the morning and themselves to work or a training program. It is a lot easier to accomplish this daily task if all children go to the same location or different buildings in close proximity. The director in Dayton, OH, reported that one mother takes three buses each morning to deliver her children to care and herself to work. Because decisions concerning Head Start's program for infants and toddlers are still being made, grantees provided input by stating their goal that Head Start allow grantees to provide full-day care for infants and toddlers, should grantees be awarded a new Early Head Start grant. Head Start grantees, therefore, would prefer to set up classrooms for infants and children up to 5 years old in the same building or place children in this age range in nearby family child care homes.
Ensuring High-Quality Services for Children, Parents, and Staff
All grantees visited agreed that it is essential to offer high-quality services to Head Start children and families. They felt strongly that it is possible to deliver high-quality services in a full-day program and that Head Start's Performance Standards can be met throughout the day. However, delivery of high-quality services is easier in some models of full-day care than in others. The wraparound model is the easiest because Head Start staff are in charge of the entire program for children and parents; they are well versed in the program's philosophy and regulations and can ensure that standards are met.
The wrap-in model, in which Head Start staff add services to existing child care programs, makes delivery of high-quality services somewhat more difficult. It may take time for the teachers in these programs to complete appropriate training and implement high-quality programs. It may also take time for staff to develop successful parent involvement strategies and for parents to become involved. Therefore, grantees suggest that the Head Start Bureau allow time for grantees to phase Head Start into existing child care settings before expecting all regulations to be met. In addition, clear expectations for the phase-in period should be stated in the On-Site Program Review Instrument.
The connected care model is the most difficult from a quality standpoint because Head Start staff are not in charge of implementing the connected care program. The one grantee director visited who used such a model said that although she would prefer to contract only with high-quality providers of child care, she does not always succeed due to lower than market reimbursement rates. Her goal is to create and forge such strong linkages in the community that all child care providers will move into the high-quality range. However, this is a long-term goal. She believes that Head Start may need to provide additional funding to grantees who use a connected care model to allow them to offer training, equipment, and materials to their contracted providers so that Head Start children are assured of high-quality care in all of their care settings.
The logistics of carrying out a high-quality program for parents who are in school or training programs or are working have posed difficulties for grantees as they move from part-day to full-day programs; working parents just do not have the same amount of time and energy to devote to Head Start activities. In response, grantees have developed new and creative ways to provide all aspects of Head Start for their full-day families. For instance, all grantees agree on the importance of the parent involvement component of the program. As cited in Chapter II, many grantees have developed successful strategies for working with parents. Several staff members, especially those associated with family child care homes, said that they felt they had especially strong relationships with parents because they had daily contact with most parents who drop off and pick up their children. During arrival and departure hours, staff and parents exchange a good deal of information about the children, child rearing, and family circumstances. Therefore, the staff felt that parents were involved, even though staff could not report parent classroom time or attendance at meetings that would clearly demonstrate the involvement. At the same time, all staff were interested in suggestions for ways to involve parents further. Staff encouraged Head Start to continue to develop materials concerning parent involvement including strategies for working parents and to hold workshops on the topic, because they wanted to hear about as many successful strategies as possible.
Several issues discussed by grantees under the topic of high-quality service delivery related particularly to the quality of the work lives of teaching staff in full-day programs. Like staff in part-day classrooms, these staff must prepare the classroom for new activities, clean up from past activities, keep child records up to date, and complete home visits. These staff also would like to participate in as many hours of training as are provided for part-day staff. Yet they are with children for longer hours — in family child care homes, for as many as 10 to 12 hours a day. Directors created many arrangements to allow breaks during the day, time for record keeping, and time off to compensate for training time and evening hours spent conducting home visits. But these same directors point out that it is costly to pay for additional staff or substitutes. They would like to see Head Start state in policies or accepted practice documents that one of the expected costs of full-day services is the cost of substitutes or additional staff to support breaks, compensatory time, and staff training time.
Finally, program staff believe that the quality of their services is enhanced by the availability of technical assistance. Staff would appreciate the chance to talk with knowledgeable people about the issues they are facing and hear suggestions about ways others have dealt with these issues. Grantee programs are not unraveling or failing in quality; however, staff often find their jobs to be stressful. Connection to a strong technical assistance staff makes grantee staff feel a part of a large network with the same goal, rather than alone in attempting to improve the lives of families. Therefore, staff would like Head Start to strengthen the technical assistance network in its ability to support full-day programs.
Creating Flexibility for Local Programs
One of the strongest messages grantees emphasized is the importance of creating guidance at a national level that is specific enough to prevent grantees from getting into trouble with reviewers and auditors, yet is flexible enough to allow them to respond to local circumstances. Many grantee directors we talked with could be classified as entrepreneurs: When they saw a need among their families, they found a way to meet it. Each one expressed appreciation for the latitude allowed by national and regional office staff and, in some cases, for the encouragement they were given to try new methods.
Two examples of the ways in which directors have responded differently to the demands of a full-day program, due to varying local circumstances, involve their scheduling of afternoon activities for children and their scheduling of staff to cover the hours in which the full-day classroom is open. Four of the grantees provided structured learning time for children in the afternoon schedule; four grantees did not. In each instance, education staff felt that they had done their best to construct a program that met Head Start Performance Standards throughout the day and that represented quality educational programs for children. But in the programs without a structured afternoon activity, there were good reasons for its absence: (1) the afternoon was short (ending at about 3:30 p.m.), and there was not sufficient time for structured activities after naps; or (2) parents began arriving at about 3:00 p.m., which meant any structured activity was interrupted and interfered with a positive transition time from Head Start to home. Staff would appreciate having Head Start set standards for high-quality full- day programs that leave the decision about afternoon programming up to each grantee.
Directors have implemented two different methods of classroom staffing to cover the hours of full-day care: (1) staggering the times that each of the paid staff begin and end their work days; and (2) hiring two separate two-person teams, one for the morning and one for the afternoon. In this instance of decisionmaking, directors have enjoyed the right to make a decision that fits their needs and staff. Directors would like to see Head Start publish suggestions of models for full-day staffing, but leave the final decision to local grantees.
A third way in which directors have responded differently to the demands of a full-day program is in the method they use to manage income from multiple funding sources. As cited in Chapter II, grantees' methods can be divided into five types:
All types of methods have passed audits and are approved by regional office contract staff. However, not all arrangements are felt to be satisfactory by grantee staff, and grantees, even those that are comfortable with their methods, feel that they could use additional guidance from the Head Start Bureau regarding the management of multiple funding sources.
The basic criteria that grantee directors used for judging the acceptability of a fiscal management strategy were its ease of use and its cost. If directors had to hire additional fiscal staff because of difficulty in using a methodology, such methodology was viewed as a barrier to their ability to deliver quality services. In other words, the money for extra fiscal staff generally came at the expense of services for children and families. The use of multiple allocation formulas (method 5) is the most expensive form of fiscal management; some grantees have simplified allocations by negotiating with all funding sources to accept a single formula for all line items (method 4). Dividing the responsibility for line items by funding sources or making up-front decisions about the charges to be paid by each source and managing exclusively Head Start funds (methods 1 and 3) were highly satisfactory to grantees and costly only in terms of the time for negotiation of agreements with other funding sources. Combining funds into one pot and spending from it (method 2) was the easiest and least expensive method.
Ideally, from grantees' viewpoints, Federal and state funding programs should come to a universal agreement to allow grantees to combine funding streams into one pot. However, for reasons of accountability, this arrangement may not be readily available. But there are ways in which Head Start can help pave the way for grantees to allocate costs among multiple sources more easily. Grantees suggest that Head Start do the following:
One final issue concerning funding is the difficult position in which grantees find themselves when they accept parent fees for extended hours of care. At times, these fees are a part of the copayment requirement of the second funding source; at other times, they are the responsibility of the parent because there is no other funding source. Although some argue that copays can help prepare parents for a time when child care costs will be their responsibility, collection of fees poses problems for Head Start staff. The discomfort for staff arises in part because, in general, the role of Head Start is to work with families, but when Head Start behaves as a collection agency, it is working against families. It also arises because Head Start, as a program, stipulates that parents cannot be charged for Head Start services (as do other funding sources such as AFDC). Although additional hours of care may not officially be called Head Start, they are usually delivered by the same grantee and the same staff and follow the same Head Start Performance Standards. Grantees would appreciate some dialogue on the issue of when it is appropriate to charge families for care and how it should be done, while maintaining Head Start's role of working with and for the family.
Gathering Further Information
This study provided considerable information about the delivery of full-day services by drawing upon funding from multiple sources. However, many questions regarding the provision of full-day services for Head Start children and families still remain.
First, this study could not provide information on the prevalence of full-day care and the service delivery approaches. For instance, it is not known how many children are served in wrap-around, wrap-in, and connected care programs. It is also not known from this study or from available databases the number of Head Start children who are (1) provided with care for more than 8 hours a day during the school year or a 12-month calendar year; (2) enrolled in wraparound programs cofunded by SSBG, CCDBG, AFDC/JOBS, or state child care or education funds; (3) enrolled in wrap-in programs cofunded by each potential source; or (4) enrolled in connected care, jointly funded by each source. A relatively straightforward way to gather these data would be to alter the current questions on the PIR to update the list of funding sources and gather information on numbers of children involved in full-day care.
Second, this study did not address the issue of how the various approaches to care affect the well-being of children. It is not known, for instance, how children fare when they change classrooms, locations, or providers during the day: Are there differences in the development of social competence related to stability of care setting? to stability of providers?
Third, several of the programs that were visited had co- located services for infants, toddlers, and preschool-aged children; all directors wanted to be able to offer this service. The directors believe that Head Start will become a more viable option for working families when all of these age groups are routinely served at the same location. The effect of co-locating services on enrollment in Head Start and on family progress toward self-sufficiency are important issues that may be addressed in further research: Do more families choose to enroll their preschool-age children in Head Start when they can also place younger children in the facility? Do families make more progress toward self-sufficiency when all of their child care needs are met in one location?
And finally, this study did not collect any information on care arrangements for Head Start children that parents arrange for themselves. It is not known how many Head Start children are cared for by relatives before and after the Head Start day, how the siblings of Head Start children are cared for, or how many parents work non-traditional hours and need alternative care arrangements for their children.
All of these are important issues for Head Start staff and families alike and can only be addressed with further research. In consequence, the final recommendation is that Head Start examine these research questions concerning full-day services as it sets a research agenda for the next decade.
Summary
Visits to eight Head Start grantees that offer full-day services to children enabled the differentiation of three basic approaches for service delivery. In wraparound care, grantees provided a core set of Head Start services around which they added hours of child care paid for by other sources. In wrap-in care, grantee staff used child care services paid for by another source as the core of full-day care and added to the core all services that were needed to meet Head Start Performance Standards. In connected care, grantee staff provided Head Start services to children in the morning and transported children to an afternoon care setting that did not meet Head Start Performance Standards.
Grantees raised a number of issues related to the delivery of services under each approach, including the administration and management of the arrangement, the substance of the program for children and families, funding arrangements, difficulties in collaboration, and methods of meeting family needs for infant and toddler care. These issues were then converted into possible policy and planning decisions that Head Start could make to ease the process of providing full-day services and to encourage more grantees to try the full-day model. Such policy and planning decisions included ways to improve response to the needs of families; deliver high-quality services for children, parents, and staff; and offer further guidance that would prevent grantee problems yet allows local flexibility in implementation.
The grantees who offer full-day services are committed to this mode of service delivery. It meets the needs of families, and grantees have found ways to deliver high-quality services through funding arrangements that work for them and their other funding sources. The directors of these grantees may be described as entrepreneurs, because they have forged new partnerships and developed new funding arrangements to enable them to offer full-day services. Their experiences can help clarify options for others who now follow in their footsteps.
WESTCHESTER COMMUNITY OPPORTUNITY PROGRAM
ELMSFORD, NEW YORK
ELLEN FARRAR, DIRECTOR
The Westchester Community Opportunity program (WCOP) in suburban New York operates a full-day Head Start program for over 800 children. Head Start children share classrooms with non-Head Start children; and comprehensive services are provided to all children, following Head Start Performance Standards throughout the day. Funding for full-day services is provided by a variety of sources, including Federal, state, and local ones. WCOP has developed strong ties with other local agencies that provide services to poor children. These groups share a common goal of providing services to all children in need and view Head Start as the "infrastructure" for providing services.
The Westchester Community Opportunity Program (WCOP) is comprised of one grantee and five delegate agencies. WCOP serves 25 communities in Westchester County, an affluent bedroom community of New York City with growing reservoirs of poverty spilling over from the city's boundaries. The total funded enrollment for the grantee and delegate agencies is 1,970 children; and both the grantee and the delegate agencies provide full-day services for Head Start as well as non-Head Start children. In all, full-day services are provided for 828 Head Start children.
The WCOP philosophy is to supply services to children in need. Therefore, in the delivery of services, the grantee does not distinguish between Head Start and non-Head Start children. The Head Start director indicated that Head Start provides the infrastructure for delivering services to poor children, and regardless of the funding source, Head Start Performance Standards are followed for all children and for all services.
In recent years, WCOP has dealt with a growing population of homeless children as well as infants and toddlers of drug abusing parents. WCOP is part of a number of programs, including an HHS McKinney demonstration project, that support these children. Both the Head Start director and the executive director of the County Child Care Council feel that today's most pressing needs are for services for infants and toddlers. That feeling emanates from the fact that if these high-risk children (e.g., homeless, drug exposed) do not receive services before their third birthday, long-term, permanent damage in their cognitive, social, and physical development will occur, thus causing the required level of services for these children to increase greatly.
WCOP has been offering full-day services since the inception of the program 30 years ago. At that time, full-day services were offered by only one center. Through the community needs assessment process, it became apparent that parents could not attain economic self-sufficiency without full-day care options for their children. Thus, the number of full-day slots has grown to meet the changing needs of the community. For the past 12 years, the majority of centers have offered the full-day option.
WCOP provides two different scheduling options for full-day services. Working parents are offered 10 hours of care a day, while parents in school or job training are offered 8 hours of care. Eight hours of care also are provided to homeless children and children in the care of the Child Protective Services. The exact hours when care begins and ends varies across centers. The vast majority of full-day classes operate year round, closing only for 12 Federal holidays. Of the 828 Head Start children in full-day care, almost 90 percent (736 children) have care year round.
There is a waiting list for full-day services, the longest being for infant and toddler care. Priority for full-day slots is determined by a variety of criteria. If the mother is in substance abuse treatment, if the family is homeless, or if the mother is working or in training, full-day services are provided. Priority is assigned according to special needs, low-income status, and then on a first come – first served basis. The Head Start director would like to provide more full-day services, but finding space for appropriate facilities is a major obstacle.
Full-day services are delivered by WCOP, without specific contracts or agreements with other agencies. However, over the years, WCOP has developed excellent working relationships with other county agencies that serve poor children and provide child care services. The Head Start director works closely with the executive director of the County Child Care Council as well as with the Department of Social Services. These three groups function as a team to find ways to provide services wherever gaps occur. The Head Start director also is involved in county-level planning that will affect services to poor children and low- income families. Overall, the child care coordinator for the county describes WCOP and its partners as a unified early childhood community.
The Head Start director also has an excellent working relationship with the regional office. In fact, the director indicated that many of her successes in expanding and upgrading services would not have been possible without the support of the regional office.
All of the children in full-day care are in center-based programs, where they remain in the same classroom and with the same staff all day. Head Start Performance Standards are followed throughout the day; and all classes serve both Head Start and non-Head Start children, all of whom, regardless of Head Start enrollment, receive comprehensive services.
WCOP owns one facility and rents space or has space donated for all of its other classrooms. When Head Start rents space in other child care centers, WCOP furnishes the staff to run the program. Thus, all of the teachers in Head Start classrooms are WCOP employees.
The daily schedule of activities varies from classroom to classroom. After the traditional Head Start morning program, the children have nap or quiet time, followed by a snack. Late afternoon's involve some group activities (usually circle time) and free play.
Each 10-hour session is staffed with 3 teachers who stagger their hours (one teacher may work from 7:30-3:30, another from 8:30-4:40, and yet another from 9:30-5:30) in order to provide coverage whenever it is needed. In addition, WCOP employs a "floating teacher" to provide breaks. The 8-hour sessions employ two teachers and usually have a volunteer who "covers" during break times. Most centers also have a "floater" on staff to fill in wherever necessary. The component staff regularly switch their hours from a.m. to p.m., to insure availability for early as well as late arriving and departing parents.
When the program first began, one of the most daunting challenges to providing full-day services was developing a method to treat all staff fairly vis a vis salary and benefits. Now, all staff employed by WCOP, both Head Start and non-Head Start, are paid according to one scale. All teachers also are provided the same training; and only teachers paid by the school districts have higher salaries. This does not appear to pose a problem, as school-based teachers are hired almost exclusively from Head Start programs. The successful and more experienced Head Start teachers have come to view these school-based positions as promotion possibilities.
The Head Start director feels that a lot of the success of her program can be attributed to the high quality of the staff. Unlike many communities, WCOP is able to attract many well educated, professionally trained staff who are willing and able to accept the low wages typically paid to early childhood workers.
Home visits are done in the evenings or on weekends, and teachers are provided compensatory time for these extra hours. Scheduling home visits continues to be a difficult issue for the grantee, however.
All WCOP staff, whether they are paid by Head Start or other funds, receive the same training. Joint training sessions are held by Head Start and the Child Care Council; and all staff are monitored and evaluated just as if they are Head Start staff. In Westchester, all staff are encouraged to complete a CDA, which many non-Head Start staff have earned.
Scheduling training is quite difficult in the full-day programs. WCOP closes its full-day Head Start program for two days a year for training. Most of the other training takes place at the centers, often during naptime and with the help of volunteers. In instances where teachers need to leave the center for training, substitutes are hired.
As many of the parents work or are in training during the day, volunteering in the classroom poses problems. To accommodate the schedule of parents who are working or in training, many parent activities take place in the evenings. In addition, whenever parents' work or training overlaps with Head Start functions, parents are encouraged to use their skills in the Head Start environment. For instance, if a parent is receiving training related to food service preparation, he or she is encouraged to volunteer at the center kitchen.
Full-day parents are well represented on the Head Start Policy Council. Just as the classrooms have both Head Start and non-Head Start children, the Policy Council has Head Start and non-Head Start parents: The role of the non-Head Start parents on the policy council is the same as the role of the Head Start parents: They participate equally in all activities, including the hiring of staff.
WCOP receives funding from many sources. In addition to Head Start funds, these include SSBG (Title XX), CCDBG, JOBS, Teen Pregnancy, State Grants, BOCES, McKinney funds, HUD demonstration grant, United Way, Community Development Grants, and USDA reimbursements. Income-contingent parent fees also are collected, as required by funding sources other than Head Start. This year, WCOP received quality improvement funds from Head Start, which were used in several ways: to pay for a contracts coordinator, to upgrade mental health services, and to increase staff salaries.
In addition, WCOP receives in-kind donations from the community, including space, playground equipment, and durable goods (e.g., clothing, furniture). The "downside" of this is keeping track of the in-kind donations (as Head Start requires), which means a large paperwork burden for the grantee.
All full-day families are subject to fees that vary by income. Families pay between 2 and 30 dollars a week (the average is about 15). Parent fees become part of the "general revenue pot," just like all other funding, and are usually collected weekly, according to a fee scale set by the county.
WCOP has taken an unusual approach to funding full-day services. All funds are placed in a central pool from which all expenses are paid — a process approved and supported by the regional office even though WCOP does not allocate costs to the different funding sources. WCOP has been operating its program this way for many years and has worked with state and local officials to change regulations that limit their ability to use this accounting method.
All of the teachers, both Head Start and non-Head Start, are employees of WCOP, which pays all of its employees according to the same scale, with all of the salary rates blended together. In addition, WCOP has been able to provide the same cost-of- living increases to all employees.
The only time salaries vary is if care is provided by non- WCOP employees. For instance, when Head Start pays for one or more classrooms in a non-WCOP center, the non-WCOP center is the employer for the providers in the non-Head Start classrooms and usually pays a lower salary. The directors of these centers are working to bring the salaries of their teachers in non-Head Start classrooms in line with WCOP salaries.
On the other hand, if the classroom is in a public school setting, like BOCES, the non-Head Start teachers are paid a higher salary commensurate with other public school teachers (these teachers usually have to have a Bachelors degree). As previously stated, these public school positions are viewed as promotion potential by Head Start teachers.
A computerized accounting system that was customized to accommodate the large number of sites on which they maintain data is used by WCOP; and a full-time administrative person keeps track of the financial data. The differing administrative requirements of the various funding sources generates a great deal of paperwork for the grantee. However, if guidelines were standardized across programs this process could be simplified. At present, the USDA, Head Start, and the state Department of Social Services all have different guidelines for program participation.
For some children in full-day services, WCOP receives both Head Start and full child care subsidies. In this situation, the money is used to provide additional services or to provide services to additional children, and is incorporated into the central pool.
In accordance with their central budgeting policy, WCOP has one policy for reimbursement according to attendance. Children can miss up to 12 days of Head Start per quarter before loss of funding occurs.
Differences in the reimbursement structures — prospective versus retrospective payments — are problematic for program operation. The grantee must meet its payroll and pay its bills in a timely fashion, and reimbursements do not always arrive soon enough to keep cash flow smooth.
The Head Start director is very pleased that full-day services are being provided to so many children and that Head Start provides a model of service delivery that can be used throughout the early childhood community. The director feels that there are still more children that would benefit from full- day care, particularly infants and toddlers; however, the lack of availability of appropriate facilities is a major obstacle to her plans to continually expand the program. Land values are very high in Westchester County and unoccupied space is scarce. Issues of staff training and parent involvement remain somewhat problematic, but the grantee is determined to find ways to make the program continue to work.
WESTERN KENTUCKY UNIVERSITY CHILD CARE CONSORTIUM
BOWLING GREEN, KENTUCKY
COLLEEN MENDEL, DIRECTOR
The Western Kentucky University Child Care Consortium (WKUCCC) operates a full-day center-based Head Start program for 34 children, covering the university cachement area in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Head Start children are served together in the same classrooms with non-Head Start preschoolers, and Program Performance Standards are followed throughout the day for all children. WKUCCC relies on a number of additional funding sources to provide its wraparound services, including the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG), SSBG (Title XX), and Job Opportunities and Basic Skills (JOBS) support for individual parents, and sliding scale parent fees that are charged for the child care portion of the day.
The Western Kentucky University Child Care Consortium (WKUCCC) Head Start program serves a total of 22 counties in Western Kentucky through one grantee and two delegate agencies (each of which are grantee agencies in their own right). The object of the site visit was the WKUCCC grantee in Bowling Green — a program serving 51 Head Start children, 34 of whom receive full-day service. Full-day service also is provided to approximately 20 of the 41 Head Start children at the Audubon Area Community Services, Inc., a delegate agency in a center- based program. The other delegate agency does not offer full-day services to its 60 Head Start children.
In January 1995, thanks to a $120,000 Head Start expansion grant and a $150,000 HUD-Head Start Partnership grant for facility renovation, a new delegate agency will open in a local Bowling Green housing project. This delegate plans to offer full-day service for approximately 34 Head Start children.
Since 1984, the WKUCCC grantee has served a primarily university-affiliated Head Start population of what the director describes as the "voluntary poor" (students with children) and the "working poor" (university maintenance, buildings and grounds, and kitchen staff).<9> In addition to its 51 Head Start children, the program serves 69 non-Head Start children from birth through school age, 52 of whom receive full-day service in the same center as the Head Start children. Those non-Head Start children who are preschool-age are commingled in the same classrooms as the Head Start children. Some of the non-Head Start children also are from low-income families who receive funding from Federal sources other than Head Start; some are children of university professors or other local professionals who pay full fees for the program.
The WKUCCC Head Start in Bowling Green has offered full-day services since the program opened its doors to children in 1984.<10> Then, as now, the program's community needs assessment indicated that full-day care was a serious need for the population of full-time students and low-income university staff that the program was serving. From the beginning, sliding scale fees for the child care portion of the day were charged to all parents. Before the program had access to additional funding sources, this was the only way the director could afford to offer a full-day wraparound program. Two years ago, the program began to receive CCDBG funding, and low-income parents began to apply for additional Federal child care assistance such as SSBG (Title XX), as described below.
Students who use the program would like it to offer what the director jokingly called "designer child care for off-the-rack prices" (i.e., they would like to use child care only for those hours they are in class, which vary day to day). In addition, many of them who take evening classes need evening care at least once a week. However, the program found that it was too difficult to ensure the constant enrollment that would make the program economically viable, if they catered to individual student schedules. Therefore, all parents must pay for at least one-half day of child care, if they wish any service beyond the five hours that Head Start funds.
The full-day program at WKUCCC serves 34 Head Start children and 52 non-Head Start children, 8 of whom are preschoolers. Ten of the 34 Head Start children receive full-year services as well; the other 24 receive full-day services for only 9 months of the year. Except for one week in August and two weeks in December, the center is open for business all year.
The full-day Head Start program is a wraparound program that is funded by a number of different sources, as described below. The program operates from 7:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. (10.5 hours) five days a week; parents, however, are free to pick their children up or drop them off at any time during those hours. Head Start Program Performance Standards are followed throughout the day,<11> although only five hours of this time are paid for by Head Start.
The Head Start program does maintain a waiting list for full-day wraparound services, although it does not have a wait list for half-day Head Start. The education coordinator knows that some of the children who are on the waiting list are latch- key children who are being left alone at home while their parents work or attend classes. She also feels that some Head Start children whose parents do not work still need full-day service, since their families are dysfunctional.
All children are served for the full-day in one center in which there are three classrooms for preschoolers (where Head Start and non-Head Start children are served together) and one classroom, each, for infants, toddlers, and school-age children.<12> Because the staff considers the Head Start Program Performance Standards such a good model, the standards govern the infant and toddler and school-age classrooms as well, even though they are not funded by Head Start.
No special collaborative arrangements are used for the delivery of full-day services. However, as mentioned above, the university contributes significantly to the program, both financially and programmatically. For example, the program serves a large number of children with disabilities (between 25 and 30 percent of the Head Start enrollment), because of the wealth of university resources for children with special needs, and because WKUCCC is one of the few programs in the area that will serve these children. The program also serves a large percentage of foster children, since many university-affiliated employees are foster parents. In addition, students from the university who are earning their degree in early childhood education serve as part-time paid and volunteer teacher's aides, while those earning degrees in social work often volunteer or conduct formal internships as part-time family service workers.
Other programs operated by the grantee also enhance full-day services: its Technical Assistance Support Center (TASC) for Head Start's Region IV-B, Head Start Teaching Center (HSTC), and WKU's Child Development Associate (CDA) training program. Under a $40,000 grant from the CCDBG program, the grantee maintains a computer database of child care providers for parents who request referrals, and provides consumer education regarding the characteristics of quality child care. In addition, the grantee provides staff training based upon the Head Start philosophy to approximately 150 private providers.
Head Start preschoolers at the Bowling Green center follow the High/Scope curriculum throughout the day. After naptime in the afternoon, there are structured activities in the form of a second Circle Time and small group activities. However, afternoon activities are less structured than morning activities. This afternoon flexibility is necessary for two reasons: (1) children begin to tire in the afternoon, even if they have had a nap or quiet time; and (2) parents begin to pick up their children by 3:00 p.m., which can disrupt more structured activities.
The WKUCCC Head Start program has a number of special features and innovations. First of all, through the Kentucky Very Special Arts program, teachers receive special training in arts curriculum and planning and how to include children with disabilities in the arts program. Last year, children studied the work of Michelangelo, Monet, Georgia O'Keefe, and Mozart; and through a linkage with the Humane Society, children are taught how to properly care for pets (small animals are kept in comfortable enclosures in the classrooms).
The center in which the WKUCCC is housed contains a university-operated adult day and health care program for the elderly, especially those with Alzheimer's disease. Preschool children (as well as infants and toddlers) visit daily with the elderly to sing songs, tell stories, and play games together.
Because Head Start and non-Head Start children are served together, all children benefit from a program that adheres strictly to the Performance Standards. However, non-Head Start parents are asked to pay additional fees for those Head Start services that add additional cost per child, (such as dental services and field trips), should the parents choose to use them. Therefore, teachers and parents know which children are Head Start and which are non-Head Start, but no distinction is made between them in the classroom.
Staffing is one of the most challenging aspects of the full- day Head Start program. Child/staff ratios for preschool classrooms are kept at 8:1 (lower than Head Start's prescribed ratio of 10:1, because children with disabilities comprise 25 to 30 percent of the enrollment). The center's Head Start staff of seven full-time and two part-time teachers<13> (all with CDA or equivalent degrees) work in teams of two (and sometimes three, at peak attendance hours) to staff the three preschool classrooms (two full-day and one morning-only classroom); it takes four staff to cover the day in a full-day preschool classroom. No teacher spends more than six and one-half hours in the classroom per day; the other hour and one-half is reserved for planning time or for home visits. Two part-time "morning-only" teachers cover the hours before 8 a.m and then, once they are relieved by full-time staff, fill in for the teachers in other classrooms, so that those teachers can have their planning time. Classroom staff are supplemented by volunteer university students who are obtaining their degrees in early childhood education, and by a number of volunteer "foster grandparents." Two full-time equivalent (FTE) university students on "work-study" scholarships serve as teaching aides. The education coordinator noted that if she needs more staff, she finds it relatively easy to obtain more volunteers, because of the program's university affiliation.
The full-day program, however, is constantly challenged by the fact that no one teacher is in the classroom all day long, causing teacher "ownership" of the classroom to suffer. In addition, staff worry about the consistency of caregiving for the children, since those who stay for 10 hours often see 4 or 5 different teachers a day. However, the education coordinator feels that the children are less affected by this than they would be if they had to change classrooms during the day. Whenever possible, she tries to minimize disruption for the children by scheduling staff changes during nap times.
In addition, full-day care makes it difficult to release staff for planning time, home visits, and training. Teachers must complete their home visits during their planning time or during their evening free time. Two teachers said they were comfortable performing home visits during some of their planning time, since, as experienced teachers, they felt they did not need all of their planning hours to prepare for class. Parents who are students at the university also are provided the option of receiving their home visits in the center during staff planning times.
Nonetheless, more than 50 percent of the home visits must take place in the evenings, because most parents work or attend school during the day. Monthly staff meetings and training sessions also are held at night. Insofar as she is able, without losing appropriate staff coverage, the education coordinator tries to give teachers "compensatory time" for the evening hours they work, but teachers still end up donating free time to the program.
According to the director, a hallmark of the Head Start program is its emphasis on training and close affiliation with the TASC and HSTC. Each classroom is equipped with one-way mirrors in which students, parents, and Head Start TASC and HSTC participants are invited to watch and listen to children's activities. (The center also serves as a university laboratory for the early childhood education, child development, and social work degree programs). Center staff members often serve as mentor teachers for other grantees. Likewise, the program is regularly observed and evaluated by other Head Start and university staff, who give suggestions and provide insight into the WKUCCC program.
All teachers in the program, including those who work with infants, toddlers, and school-age children, receive Head Start training. One week of training is provided each August, and training also is offered at each monthly staff meeting. In addition, all teachers must become certified in first aid and cardio-pulmonary resuscitation (CPR).
Because Head Start parents in the full-day program generally work or attend school, the parent involvement coordinator has had to, in her words, "innovate or die" in planning appropriate parent involvement activities. Parent meetings are held at night (with free child care) or during lunch time, "brown bag" sessions. Since most parents have little free time to stop at the center, the parent involvement coordinator prepares "home packets" of volunteer work they can perform for Head Start or home activities they can share with their children in their limited free time. For instance, parents write newsletter articles or perform research to find articles on subjects such as child health that may be of interest to the entire Head Start community. "Make and Take" activity packets also are available that help parents work with children at home on skills such as color identification or counting. Each parent is provided with a mailbox, so that they can pick up newsletters and home packets when they pick up their children.
As hard as she tries, however, the parent involvement coordinator is only able to recruit about 10 percent of parents to perform more "traditional" Head Start activities, such as classroom volunteering or daytime parent training sessions. Because of the program's educated population, most of the parents do not need training in areas such as literacy or life skills. However, the coordinator found that at least five parents this year were interested in attending a six-week, self-taught wordprocessing course. Set up like a computer lab, parents could drop by for a few minutes during their class breaks and work on the center computers. The coordinator has established a parent training library of audio and video tapes, as well, which parents can check out for use in their homes or cars.
The coordinator has found that parents do enjoy opportunities to network informally with one another. For instance, a number of parents have formed a single parent support group, which socializes