Our local paper shared an article about the “deregulating” of Head Start. (Link to article here.) Back in September 2025, I wrote a blog (link here) about President Lyndon Johnson and how Head Start was one of the pillars of his “War on Poverty.”
President Lyndon B. Johnson
This is personal for me. Head Start gave me my first full-time job when I graduated from the University of Hawai`i with an Early Childhood Education degree. That opportunity provided me with a strong foundation as an educator. I saw, first-hand, the value of providing an experience for disadvantaged preschoolers which focused not just on the child, but on their support system as well. Families were encouraged to volunteer in the classroom and they were provided with information and guidance to navigate social and health support services. We made home visits, sharing students’ developmental goals, and emphasizing the home-school connection that would benefit their children when they entered kindergarten.
In my book Leading with Aloha: from the Pineapple Fields to the Principal’s Office, I share about my experiences as a Head Start teacher and how those fifteen years impacted me for the rest of my career. I wrote: I have a special place in my heart for my first students, all of whom were from low-income families. Their parents, knowing how important a preschool experience could be, committed to team with us at Head Start so their children would benefit. We worked together - home and school - to give these students the confidence and the skills to be successful in kindergarten and beyond. My heart was filled with aloha for these preschoolers. They may have been from underprivileged homes, but their parents were determined that their children would have better opportunities in life than they had, just like my parents did for my siblings and me. (page 18)
In the chapter titled “My Life as a Teacher,” I shared how working with the Head Start program for 15 years provided the foundation that guided me later when I served as an elementary school teacher and then as a principal.
Working with economically disadvantaged preschool students validated my core education beliefs about equity, learning through play, collaborating as a team, the importance of parent involvement and engagement, and early interventions. More than that, though, I got to see the results firsthand, when these students, who were considered at-risk, had quality educational services that address the whole child. Head Start provided health services, free meals, social services, and parent education in addition to addressing the needs of every child to prepare them to be successful in kindergarten and beyond.
Many of the students entered Head Start with deficits in their overall development especially in oral and receptive language. Most of our students had never held a book in their hands or listened to a story until they started school. By the end of the year, they loved story time and were raising their hands to answer questions. They were also borrowing books to read at home with their parents. This was critical because language is essential to the development of literacy skills when students begin their formal school experience. As an early childhood advocate, I believe that play is a child’s work and that we can learn much about children’s strengths and needs by observing them as they play, either individually or with others. Our quarterly progress assessments and team meetings helped me as a teacher to ensure that our classroom environment provided opportunities for students to grow and develop to their fullest potential to make up for any deficits when they entered our program.
Parents were an integral part of the Head Start program. We encouraged and trained them to help out in the classroom, working with individuals or small groups of students. Student needs were addressed in a more timely manner with the extra bodies in the classroom. Some of our parents volunteered daily, and by the end of the year, they were comfortable leading the whole group in a read-aloud or other similar activity. I am proud that many of these parent volunteers applied for and were hired as educational assistants, and some even went on to get their credential to become teachers, thereby breaking the poverty cycle that may have held them back. I feel strongly that connections with our parents benefit the students and staff at a school, and I wish that more teachers had the opportunity to see the value in training parents as volunteers in the classroom.
Another requirement of Head Start is that 10% of the students have identified special needs with an Individualized Education Program to address any developmental delays. These students were mainstreamed in the general education setting with push-in or pull-out resource services. Working with these students and learning different strategies to help them progress made me realize the importance of inclusive classroom environments where students with special needs are in the same classroom with normally developing students. In my fifteen years with the program, I learned so much from our special needs students. The most important lesson was that all students can learn, no matter what challenges they may face. (Pages 42-44)
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