I am an ECEAP mom and I am outraged at the Washington State Legislators for considering to cut the ECEAP program that provides early learning opportunities to so many children in our state, that backs up the federal Head Start program, and saves our state so much money later in social and criminal services by creating children that have the skills to succeed in school.
My daughter Zoe who is five and in her second year as an ECEAP student started to cry when I asked her what she thought about people taking away her school’s money. “No! Then other kids wouldn’t get to learn and sing songs, read books, make friends, or see how great my teachers are!” Zoe asked me why someone would think of doing that and asked me to make sure that it did not happen. My five year old told me that “every kid should have the chance to learn all the stuff that I am learning.” I think that she is right.
ECEAP (Early Childhood Education and Assistance Program) is a Washington State funded Early Childhood Education program that provides free preschool for families of limited income with children ages 3-5 years old. The services for children are that they are given the chance to take part in preschool programs with literacy, math, art, science, and field trips. Children receive health screenings and referrals. Parents receive information about local resources, opportunities for parent education, family fun nights, volunteerism in the program, and opportunities for community leadership.
ECEAP has a strong track record of getting low income children ready for school; the program was created in 1985. The program adds Head Start in serving children in Washington State, because less then half of the eligible children in our state are currently being served through the Federal Head Start Program. ECEAP was modeled after Head Start, and served nearly 6000 children in 2007 (Head Start served nearly 19,000 children in 2006) yet there is a minimum of 12,500 currently eligible children not being served by Head Start or ECEAP due to funding.
Currently Snohomish County ECEAP is serving 992 at 21 centers throughout the Snohomish County area and there are 585children on this year’s waiting list. ECEAP often serve families that Head Start can’t reach. This is especially true in rural areas of the state where Head Start programs are not located, but ECEAP programs are found. In short ECEAP provides early learning where there are no Head Start services available. In such areas as Stanwood/ Camano Island, Arlington, Marysville, Sultan, Snohomish, Lake Stevens, Granite Falls, Oak Harbor, and Lakewood to name just a few.
(Zoe & CJ ECEAP students)
What Elected Legislators need to understand is that ECEAP and Head Start both do serve families who earn less then the Federal Poverty Level, the waiting lists for both the Head Start and ECEAP programs are skyrocketing, ECEAP’s waiting list has doubled in just one year! Also Elected Legislators need to know that the temporary dollars in the federal stimulus package with a total funding for Head Start of $2 billion- Broken up over 2 years!
And only $1 billion will go to Head Start programs, with Head Start getting only $500 million the first year and that money will go to backfill the cuts that programs have made to staff, professional development, and services for families (like transportation) in the past few years. Because of the funding shortfalls during the Bush Administration’s years in office Head Start programs across our state have had to reduce hours of programming for kids and we have seen caseloads for family services workers increase substantially as just some examples.
Only a very small amount of funding for Head Start will be made available for “adding” new slots or expansion. The other $1 billion over the next 2 year is for improving Early Head Start that serves pregnant moms and children from birth to 3 years old- These funds are specifically dedicated to the birth to 3 populations, a program which ECEAP currently does not provide to families!
Children who come from poverty have a higher chance of live in poverty as adults, and the cost of poverty for Americans is high: The lifetime social costs of one high school dropout can be as much as $350,000. In 2000 federal spending for welfare was $313 billion, state = $212 Billion, with $5,600 from taxes from households, medical cost $222 billion, cash, food, and housing together cost $167 billion, and services, training, education, and community development cost $47 billion, families with children received $200 billion in aid and $148 billion went to single parent/ broken families.
Children who graduate High School are more likely to attend college, in which they will be able to achieve better paying jobs and create more tax paying adults in the future. For every dollar spent on a child’s education tax payers are saved more later on in welfare and other social services. With early and K-12 intervention schools systems can help to prevent intergenerational poverty lowering the number of second, and third generation welfare recipients.
The need for higher educated worker are greater now in the twenty-first century and early childhood education creates a child who has a higher chance of obtaining the needed education to meet these needs in our future if they have the support throughout their public education years. Early education to children and an added public school support system could result in more then 50,000 additional high school graduates per year, with 200 fewer murders and 5,500 fewer assaults. Farther more 30 percent of students nationwide did not graduate from high school in 2004 and 68 percent of state prison inmates did not receive a high school diploma.
By maintaining the current Washington State financial investments in the ECEAP program tax payers are saving money. Please help me to protect my child’s school and the education for all the other children that ECEAP serves! Call your Legislators, Write to them and tell them that cutting ECEAP will only cost more in the long run, or visit www.childrenshub.org/campaign/Keep_eceap_in_the_budget to sing the on-line petition to keep ECEAP in the budget. Thank you for your help.
Heather Gerrrard & Zoe Lindal, Kirkland
