Improving Head Start for School Readiness Act of 2007--Conference Report --

Floor Speech

IMPROVING HEAD START FOR SCHOOL READINESS ACT OF 2007--CONFERENCE REPORT -- (Senate - November 14, 2007)

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Massachusetts.

I am delighted we are here today to talk about one of the most important things this Congress has done for our children, and that is the Head Start Program.

I thank the Senators from Massachusetts and Wyoming for shepherding this important bill to the floor today, where it is in its last final step before it reaches the President for his signature.

For over 40 years now, Head Start has helped children from low-income families build the confidence and skills they have to have to succeed in school. As the Senator from Massachusetts said, I am a former preschool teacher, parent, school board member, and U.S. Senator. I can tell you, I have seen from every aspect how this important program benefits our children.

Today, I am very excited we are taking a vote to renew this important program. The bill we have in front of us now strengthens Head Start by making it more efficient, more accommodating, and more sensitive to our children's social, emotional, and developmental needs.

It will allow us to better serve millions of children and improve on this already successful program.

This bill will help raise the quality that Senator Kennedy talked about of our Head Start services across the country so that we ensure all of our children, no matter where they live, receive high quality, consistent services. Also, it will help ensure that all Head Start partners from our early childhood centers to our elementary schools, our childcare centers, our health care providers, our family service centers, are all working together in a coordinated way so we can best serve our young children and their families.

This bill increases funding authorization for Head Start each year from 2008 to 2010, and that will enable even more of our kids to start school ready to learn than ever before. I hope all of our colleagues will support this important bill, and I urge the President to sign it as soon as possible so we can put these new tools to work for our kids.

As the, I believe, only former preschool teacher here in the Senate, I feel a personal obligation to stand up for all of our young children. And standing up for our children, particularly our most vulnerable children, means standing up for Head Start. Each year, nearly a million poor children across this country attend our Head Start programs. Those kids didn't choose to be poor, but fortunately, since they live in this Nation, which values our young people, many of them are enrolled in Head Start where they can get the tools and the training they need to prepare them for school.

I thank Senator Kennedy and his staff as well as Ranking Member Enzi for working so hard on this bill.

I am particularly proud of the provisions that increase Head Start access for our homeless and for our foster children. This bill will help improve transportation and services for these children and places a priority on enrolling them. These are some of our kids who face some of the greatest barriers to learning in our society, and I am glad we are making their success in school and in life an immediate priority.

I also fought to make sure that parents of children enrolled in this program have a voice in the decisionmaking process on local Head Start issues. I think our parents need to be involved in these programs and to have responsibility, and I think as their kids get a jump on learning through Head Start, this program will help our parents begin to understand that they have a very important and critical role in shaping their children's education. So I am very proud we were able to work out that language and move forward in a positive direction.

To name a few other quick additions, this reauthorization improves the transition of Head Start children to school by making sure that the curriculum they get matches their State early learning standards and kindergarten skills, which is very important. It also reserves 40 percent of new Head Start funds to improve programs as well as increase salaries for staffers, and it enables Native-American and migrant Head Start programs to expand, which will increase access to early learning for those particularly vulnerable populations.

I have visited Head Start centers all across my State. I have talked with teachers, I have talked with the parents, and I have talked with advocates about ways we can improve Head Start. I am very pleased that a number of their suggestions have been put into this bill. Washington State, my home State, is a leader in early learning efforts. I think we can all be proud of this bill, and I hope all of our colleagues will support it.

I yield the floor.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source